My Bookshelf Is As Heavy As My Heart At Christmastime: Graeme reads and talks about trade paperbacks.

Because you demanded it! Well, maybe not you, but Leigh Walton3000. He definitely demanded it, and because it's the holiday season, what else could I do but deliver? And so: The Special Savage Critic Long Winded Book Edition. For you! AMERICAN VIRGIN Vol. 1: HEAD: Here's my big problem with American Virgin - It's just not sexy. It's not even just not sexy, it's practically unsexy; there's something about the writing that manages to be preachy and clinical at the same time, like someone's dad trying to write for The Kids after spending an afternoon on MySpace and reading some Brian K. Vaughan (Steven Seagle, the hypothetical dad in question, has clearly tried to style this in a similar way to Vaughan's Y: The Last Man - You get the stylized-disaffected dialogue, the last page splash cliffhangers - except the cliffhangers here are, well, not very interesting - and the self-centered male protagonist on a journey of self-discovery that he isn't comfortable with even as he needs it, complete with fantasy sequences and lost girlfriend idol figure). Becky Cloonan's art is wasted on this book, and maybe it's just my reading into things that aren't there, but you can almost see her lose interest with each successive page, even with inks by Street Angel's Jim Rugg. But as wonderful as Cloonan's art is (and her art is sexy, with asides and characters that are playful and full of life despite what the story makes them do and say), it's not enough to make this book anything more than Crap. A book about the sexual awakening of a Christian fundamentalist should be sexy, goddammit.

ASTRO CITY: LIFE IN THE BIG CITY, ASTRO CITY: CONFESSION, ASTRO CITY: FAMILY ALBUM: Hi, and welcome to "Boy, I really should have read this a long time ago" Theatre. After I got pummeled in the comments for admitting that I'd avoided Kurt Busiek's creator-owned superhero love letter for years, Hibbs leapt on my weak will against peer pressure and sold me on the first AC collection, telling me that I'd dig it. He didn't say "The first one's free," or even "Hey, kid. Wanna see somethin' cool?" followed by an evil chuckle, but he may well have done, because I ended up getting the next couple of books a couple of weeks later. Simply put, Astro City works. It's got enough callbacks to play on the characters you are familiar with, giving you an idea of the context against which the real stories take place, without openly just aping Spider-Man, Superman and everyone else (In many cases, the characters in this series are cooler than their inspirations - I really, really like Jack In The Box, for example, and Crackerjack is a lot of fun as well. Maybe it's just characters with Jack in their name that I have a weakness for. Who knows?). It also knows enough to know how to play against expectations and go small - the large epic stories take place mostly off-panel, which works really well because it allows you to fill in all the details and let them be the greatest super battles ever for you - which is where the series' heart is. On the occasions where the stories come close to traditional superheroics - When Jack meets future versions of himself, or following the serial killer in Confession - that's when it stopped working so well for me; everything just became about the costumes and the action instead of the people... And when that's the case, you're always going to miss the costumes you grew up reading about.

But, luckily, that kind of story is few and far between from what I've read so far (And in the case of Confessionals, the one long storyline I've seen so far, even there the supervillain plot is punctuated by lots of character moments). Busiek's a weird writer; he's a wonderful plotter, and it's that that seems to dominate a lot of his company-owned work. That isn't to say that he doesn't do character well in those books, because he does - I really dig his Superman because of how he writes the characters, for example, not because of the plot which has still left me kind of cold - but the stories are much more about What Happens. His Avengers, in particular, I think is one of the best plot-orientated superhero books of the '90s. But Astro City isn't about the plot, when it's really good. It's about what the characters are thinking and reacting to instead of any other stimulus, and because of that, it can do things that almost no company-owned book can really do - or do successfully, without fear of revamp when the next creative team comes on, anyway - and make the people in silly outfits feel real, for twenty-odd pages at a time, at least. Life In the Big City: Very Good, Confession: Good, Family Album: Very Good.

ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS Vol. 2: There's something about this book that shows just what it was like to be a Marvel fan in the '70s. Stories career between series - this book collects not only Defenders issues, but also issues of Marvel Two-in-One, Marvel Team-Up and a Marvel Treasury story starring Howard The Duck - but so do creators (Steve Gerber seems to follow a plot from Marvel Two-in-One and then become the regular Defenders writer purely by being in the right place at the right time, and Sal Buscema is everywhere); it makes it seem as if the line was a fun, unified, thing even if it's slightly... disorganized. But that disorganization fits this book, in a weird way (As opposed to something like Supervillain Team-Up, the Essential collection of which gets repetitive and kind of embarrassing with every second issue promising a new creative team and bold new direction as someone, desperately, tries to make the book work and hit deadline) - It is a "non-team," after all, something that's reinforced by the cover featuring the Silver Surfer who doesn't appear at all in the book itself. Not that you miss him, given everything else that happens - the plots have a wonderfully free-wheeling aspect to them, bouncing from racist cults to carbombing the rich to revolution in the Earth of the future, with each one given equal weight and importance.

The series really begins to find its feet in this collection, as a core cast becomes cemented (almost entirely made up of characters outside of the team that most people think of as the Defenders; Dr. Strange and the Hulk are the only ones of the four to make it through the entire collection) and various subplots get started allowing for some sense of continuity for the reader. It's the B-list nature of Valkyrie and Nighthawk that lets the collection work, as well; watching Steve Gerber do character work knowing that he doesn't have to stay completely straight on a book like this, and letting himself get carried away with the already convoluted backstory for the two of them (False persona of a Norse Warrior possessing the body of an insane ex-bride of a demon and Batman-ripoff reformed supervillain, respectively). He manages to make them the classic Marvel mix of ridiculous pasts and down-to-earth personalities, even while working within the restrictive monthly Marvel format of the time. More than the crazy A-plots, it's the smaller things like that that make this book Very Good if superheroes are your thing.

ESSENTIAL LIKE CAGE - HERO FOR HIRE Vol. 2: Yes, I know this is one of those books that we're meant to ironically appreciate, but the weird thing about this book is watching the writers really try and do something with the series; Don McGregor, in particular, has caption attempts at social criticism mixed with noir narration that seem both out of place in a Power Man comic and completely fitting for a 1970s exploitation book. The other weird thing is watching B-level artists strut their stuff on the B-level book and, well, do a pretty good job. George Tuska, who knew you had it in you? It's almost depressing when Chris Claremont and John Byrne come along for the last issues reprinted, with their slick and overly familiar styles, because up until that point, it'd been a pretty Okay oddity.

ETERNALS BY JACK KIRBY: Like I said before, my dad, bless his heart, gave me this for Christmas this year. It arrived early, and even though I've been very patient with every other parcel that's arrived, this was opened almost immediately and has been my bedtime reading each night this week - It's not something that's for everyone, but Good God. The speed of Kirby's work is astonishing - He just throws ideas out there and moves through them within an issue. There's no such thing as a status quo in this book - One issue it's all about Ikarus explaining about the origin of humanity, and then the Gods have come to Earth and they're going to judge us, and then the Deviants are pretending to be Satan to trick humanity into declaring war with God and it's about Sersi and the human girl in Sersi's apartment, and then Ikarus is put into a coma for an issue while two new characters fight the Deviants in Manhattan and then and then and then! By this point in his career, he'd given in even more to his admittedly not-great dialogue tics and overwritten narration, but even if you don't get the (limited) charm of them, the sheer flood of ideas that he throws at you could win you over. If you're willing to overlook clunky dialogue and want the dayglo version of the history of humanity where God is an alien with circuitry on his hand, then this is Excellent. Pricy, yes, but seriously. Man, it's good.

FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL: This is a very frustrating book for me, because what I normally love about Fables is the writing - Don't get me wrong, Mark Buckingham's art is nice enough, but it's Bill Willingham's take on the characters that somehow manages to be cynical and sweet at the same time that sells me on the stories. But the frustrating thing about this anthology of new work is that the writing lets it down badly - It's not that it's bad, exactly, but so varying in quality that the weaker stories fare even worse in comparison. This is, most definitely, an artists' showcase rather than any kind of coherent attempt at storytelling, and in that sense, it's a success; all of the art here is impressive, even if the stars are not who you'd initially expect (James Jean's pages are lacking the inventive design you see in his covers, but Tara McPherson's section is beautiful. Similarly, Brian Bolland's two-pager suffers from appalling flat coloring, while Derek Kirk Kim gets to draw bunnies with eyes that shoot lasers, and therefore can't fail). Storywise, it's more of a disappointment, with the shorter stories feeling like unnecessary and unfunny filler about characters you've never heard of before, stealing time away from the more interesting longer pieces that manage to work as introduction to regular characters for new readers and backstory for the overall arc for those who've visited the world before (The histories of Snow White and origin of Bigby, in particular, are the kind of thing you want more of - Chilling and exciting in the way they rework some old wives' tales). None of the above should give you the idea that this isn't enjoyable, because, really, it's a Good book that verges on the Very Good at times. It's just that it's less successful for both new and old readers than any of the trades of the regular series, and probably works best as something someone who already loves the characters would enjoy.

JACK STAFF: EVERYTHING USED TO BE BLACK AND WHITE: Never before has a creator-owned series shown its origins as a pitch for a corporate character so openly as this opening of Paul Grist's superhero series. Not only does the character look like Marvel's Union Jack, but he even has a run-in with a vampire... just like Marvel's Union Jack. Not that that spoils the fun, though; that gets spoiled by the disjointed writing, as Grist's attempts to mix the anthology format of old school British comics with the longer form of American comics with less-than-entirely successful results. Things come together more towards the end, but even the greatest writing in the world would come second to Grist's amazing art - He really gets how to do successful black and white art in an almost Alex Toth-like way, and some of his pages should be studied by wannabe artists to see the thinking that went on behind them. Overall, Eh writing mixed with Excellent art evens out as an Okay book that's well worth it if what you buy comics for are the pretty pictures.

KAMPUNG BOY: American Born Chinese may have (deservedly) gotten more of the attention from the second wave of First Second launches, but this memoir of Malaysian cartoonist Lat's childhood was an understated little gem in its own right. It's interesting, because I think I was underwhelmed by it on the first read, but there was something about what Lat leaves out of the story that kept bringing me back, and finding more and more to enjoy in the book. The way he turns his life as a kid into something that everyone can empathize with, without losing flavor or sense of identity is impressive and bizarrely touching, and by the end of the book - a very organic breaking point for the story, considering what's happening - then, if you're anything like me, you'll want the next volume right away. It's quiet and short and full of joy, and Very Good.

It's trades. Should I do PICK OF THE WEEK and PICK OF THE WEAK...? Probably not, considering, you know, this is hardly a "week" thing (American Virgin is pretty weak, though). Weirdly enough, as good as they are, none of these books would make it onto a list of even my top six books of the year with the possible exception of the Eternals book by Kirby. Perhaps you should just spend your money on my favorites, instead, if it's money you're looking to spend - Those would be, in reverse order, De:Tales, American Born Chinese, Pride of Bagdhad, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, Curses, and The Fate of The Artist. I'm pretty sure I've written about those at some point during the year or another, and Jeff mentions almost all of those in his round-up post below, so consider them all groovy and worth your time and attention.

Anyway, this may be my longest post here yet; hopefully I've made all of you realize that I should never talk about trades ever again. Now go and read Jeff's post below; it's a lot of fun, and he's got good taste in comics, and I feel guilty for making another massive post and pushing his post off the top of the page already.

Happy holidays, Savage readers.

Too Late For A Holiday Gift Guide? Too Early for a Best Of... List?

It probably is too late for a gift guide but considering there's still four plus days to Xmas (and considering some of you might be shopping for yourselves after Xmas with money passed your way), following is a list of forty-three items culled from my Trade Picks of 2006, with some singles thrown in that I thought were great and you could probably still find without too much trouble. They're sorted alphabetically, so no hierarchy is implied, and they represent my picks only (although if Hibbs and McMillan sorted their picks as well, wouldn't that be cool?). Brief commentary will be provided as necessary, or until my brain explodes. Without further ado (and with my apologies in advance for an insanely long post)(oh, and note I may be revising this over time in case, in my haste, my hyperbole ends up sounding redundant and/or nonsensical):

ABANDON THE OLD IN TOKYO HC: I found the second collection of short stories by Yoshiro Tatsumi even more captivating than the first. Like the stories in THE PUSH MAN, the similarities of Tatsumi's largely passive protagonists dampens the impact of the stories cumulatively, but I found some of the material in ABANDON THE OLD IN TOKYO so powerful it overcame such limitations. It's a gripping book, beautifully published and reasonably priced.

ACTION PHILOSOPHERS VOL 1 GIANT SIZED THING TPB: Volume 2 is out as well, and these books are excellent purchases for anyone who loves Larry Gonick's Cartoon History... series. Funny and informative.

ALL STAR SUPERMAN: We've still got most of the issues of these in the store, and you probably already have them. But if you know someone who went ape for Superman Returns and doesn't have these yet, do them a favor. Brandon Routh's Clark Kent was pretty good, but he wasn't half as good as Frank Quitely's.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE: Gene Yang's take on the tale of the Monkey King is a blistering and hilarious look at racism, multiculturalism, and tradition. And it's all postmodern n' shit, like them thar kids are what so fond of these days.

AZU MANGA DAIOH: Didn't actually review these for the blog, but I hunted them down after greatly enjoying the three volumes of Kiyohio Azuma's Yotsuba&!. The four volumes of Azu Manga Daioh follows a group of schoolgirls through high school. Done in a daily strip format, AMD is a little goofier and frenetic than Yotsuba&!, but is similarly rewarding in its depth of characterization and comic timing. A few of the payoffs at the end of the series are maybe a bit too much (the first payoff with Sakaki and the cat was awesome...the second and third, not so much) but that barely marred my enjoyment. Get these suckers from wherever (I got vol. 3 from Ralph's Alternate Reality Comics) while you can.

BANANA SUNDAY TPB: Colleen Coover and Root Nibot's all-ages miniseries is a refreshing tale about a new student trying to fit in at her school despite being saddled with three talking monkeys. It's even more whimsical than that description makes it out to be, and it's great reading for anyone who misses the light, well-drawn stories Harvey Comics used to put out.

BATMAN YEAR ONE HUNDRED #1-4: Still not in trade format? I think you can still get a complete set of Paul Pope's futuristic Batman story at our store. Those of you who liked Spider-Man: Reign should check this out and see how an artist can evoke and honor Frank Miller's Dark Knight without trapping themselves in a thoughtless rehash.

BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD: Yes, goddammit, Harold Sakuishi's series currently seems a little uneven, but it's so satisfying to see Kokyuki's hard work in the first three volumes pay off that I couldn't care. And Sakuishi's art manages to carry all the expressiveness in his character's elastic-faced characterizations, he doesn't need to resort to super-deformed panels, or stick-figure asides to heighten his character's emotional lives. I'm hoping it can make it through this current awkward transition period in the story and go on to kick everyone's ass. It certainly has the potential.

BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2006: Read some grousing on the Internet about this book, but I liked a lot of the material in it a great deal. Frankly, unless you're a real newbie to the world of Indy Comix, I think this anthology is more focused and has a stronger impact than Brunetti's Anthology of Graphic Fiction.

BUT I LIKE IT HC: Another book I didn't get around to writing about, I didn't think this would have much new to offer me since I already had Sacco's Yahoo #2, from which the bulk of the material is drawn. But all the extras make this a complete and fully-rounded work of its own, and the later material I hadn't seen--Sacco's hilarious portrait of himself as a helplessly suckered Rolling Stones fan--is exquisite. But I Like It is a knowing and sadly affectionate portrait of the artist as a music fan.

CASTLE WAITING HC: This gorgeous, well-priced hardcover collects (almost) all of the previous issues of Linda Medley's beautifully rendered fantasy series. Intelligent and lovely stuff.

CURSES: We've got a few copies currently in at the store and I can't recommend this highly enough--a linked collection of Kevin Huizenga's early work looks at modern civilization as both blessing and curse, and at comics as both meditation and myth. Funny, thought-provoking stuff and one of the best books of the year.

DAREDEVIL: If you were to see my list of singles that got Pick of the Week there was a pretty strong throughline--Brubaker & Morrison, then Bendis & Ellis & Fraction. Nearly every issue of this title since Ed took over made my Pick of the Week, but I also picked Bendis's last issue. This title's been on a roll for a while, and worth picking up in trade format or, if it comes to it, hunting through the back issue bins.

DEATH NOTE: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's absurdly satisfying (and satisfyingly absurd) manga suspense series was one of my favorite reading experiences of the year: the creators take a perfect story hook--a supernatural notebook that allows the wielder power over life and death--and run with it in directions nobody would ever suspect. Don't know if it can sustain its perfectly measured doses of absurdity, cleverness and suspense, but it's done an amazing job to date.

DISEASE OF LANGUAGE: Not sure if you can still get this, but two of Alan Moore's spoken word performances get intelligent and sypmathetic adaptations from Eddie Campbell. This also reprints the equally intelligent and sympathetic interview with Moore Campbell conducted for Egomania #2. You may be a little burnt out on Moore interviews now that the press folderol for Lost Girls has come and gone, but I think this interview still holds up, and it's great having all this transcendent material under one cover.

DRIFTING CLASSROOM: The first two volumes of this gave me everything I wanted from Dragonhead, and more--Kazuo Umezu's tale of an entire school thrown into a strange hostile dimension is relievedly pessimistic and dark, brutal, caustic and cathartic. So far, each volume I've read has left me awstruck and hungering for more. Dismiss this book for its anachronistic style at your peril.

ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL 2 TPB: Another book I wanted to write about at greater length, the second volume of Essential Defenders brings us Steve Gerber at something very close to the top of his game. You should keep in mind I'm a huge Marvel fanboy where this material is concerned because that's the stuff that I read, re-read and treasured as a kid, but this stuff, packed to the gills with surreal imagery, paranoid fantasies and cosmic puffery, is like having the book equivalent of The Bottled City of Kandor: all of America in the '70s is right there on your shelf.

FANTASTIC FOUR IRON MAN BIG IN JAPAN: My earlier pessimistic forecast was wrong--you can get Seth Fisher's final work in an affordable trade paperback form, and you should: not just for his witty and elegant artwork, but for a great story by Zeb Wells that manages to tie together Kaiju, C'thulhu, and the Mole Man.

FATE OF THE ARTIST: Eddie Campbell's triumphantly comic self-eulogy manages to meditate on the nature of fame and success, the format of the graphic novel, and the little succeses and failures that make life so deeply hilarious and affecting. Another one of those books that came out this year that help make 2006 feel like a watershed in the medium.

FELL #5: All of the done-in-one issues by Ellis and Templesmith were taut and impressively constructed, but this interrogation room sequence seemed to bring out the best in both creators. And the issue is less than two bucks, which warms the cockles of my miserly heart.

FINDER: FIVE CRAZY WOMEN: This latest Finder book by Carla Speed McNeil may be the best thing she's ever done--it's certainly the bawdiest. If you're a fan of strong characters, lively cartooning and hilarious storytelling, you should check this out.

FUN HOME: Literate and intensely literary, Alison Bechdel's memoir about her father's odd death--and even odder life--has earned kudos for its tremendous attention to detail, but I loved the way it captured the feeling of how highly intelligent, emotionally detached people learn to love and understand themselves and the people around them. Widely praised, I still think this graphic novel hasn't received the accolades it deserves.

GANGES #1: This collection of Glenn Ganges stories by Kevin Huizenga demonstrates the emotional throughlines that connect all the little incidents of our interior and exterior lives--and how well graphic narrative is suited for capturing those throughlines. I really loved this.

GOLGO 13: Viz is to be commended for reprinting a mere smattering of the hundreds of stories featuring Takao Saito's kick-ass, verbally understated, master hitman: perhaps most impressive is that the stories so far are truly insane--imagine Tom Clancy wacked out of his mind on PCP--and yet are clearly little more than seductive hints as to how truly apeshit the stories can get. A guilty pleasure about which my only complaint is that they need to get much guiltier and hopefully will soon.

GOON VOL 4 MY VIRTUE & GRIM CONSEQUENCES TPB: Actually, you pretty much can't go wrong with any book by Eric Powell featuring the rough and tumble Goon and his pal Frankie battling zombies in some Depression-era phantasmagoria. Funny, beautifully drawn and accomplished, and I'm sure you're reading it already.

GRAY HORSES TPB: I thought I reviewed this, but couldn't find it on the site (I may have balked because it's a bit pricey for what you get, but couldn't bring myself to write that). Whether I did or didn't, Hope Larson's dreamlike tale of a French girl in a new city discovering her future (and perhaps the past of a previous life) is enchantingly impressionistic, disarmingly gentle and odd, and well worth your time. It's continued to haunt me in the months since I first read it.

GUMBY #1: The dream team of Bob Burden and Rick Geary spin a simple yarn of Gumby and Pokey having some adventures with a charming young girl. We've still got copies of this on our shelves and it's worth the $3.99 or so to get an endearing and strangely childlike tale about clay kids at play.

IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1: One of my favorite Marvel characters finally done the justice I think he deserves, courtesy of Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and David Aja. But mainly I'm mentioning this so I can tell Arune he kicks ass for getting the Iron Fist insignia tattooed on his arm. You kick ass, Arune!!

LITTLE LULU: There's been a ton of tremendous reprints this year, but I've loved finally being able to read these classic kids' comics by John Stanley and Irving Tripp. They may look simple, but they're masterfully constructed and entertaining reading, leagues beyond the sort of "by the numbers" stuff you see in most of the stuff on the stands today..

LUBAS COMICS & STORIES #8: A stand-out issue by Beto that I mention in part because it seems to neatly encapsulate and summarize Beto's thematic approach to desire. In part, I mention it because of those nay-sayers who don't think a "best of" print collection for the Savage Critic(s) would be good reading. Did you miss the way I masterfully compared Beto's take on hedonism with Fellini's, you bastards?

NAOKI URASAWA'S MONSTER: I was a little bummed when this title moved away from that exquisite first volume's mix of serial killer suspense and hospital politics, but this book won me back over with its current incarnation as a strangely Lynchian take on The Fugitive. No idea where the hell it'll go next, but I hope it continues to be as satisfyingly melodramatic and evocative.

PLANETES BY MAKOTO YUKIMURA: Although I didn't quite love the ending as much as others have, I still found this science fiction series about garbagemen in space to be a great read. If you like Warren Ellis' space stories or Carla Speed McNeil's Finder material, you should hunt these up.

PRIDE OF BAGHDAD: Uh-oh. I can feel my brain exploding, so I better wrap this up. Brian K. Vaughan actually did a lot of really good work this year--like Bendis a few years back, he seemed to single-handedly raise the bar on what I considered a good comic book--but this Vertigo OGN features jaw-droppingly lovely art by Niko Henrichon and a very smart high concept used to good effect. In fact, most of the criticism I remember reading about this work was that it seemed too polished--like something that had already been smoothed and cleaned by producers of Dreamworks and several rounds of audience score cards. If the worst Vaughan has to offer is a near-Spielbergian proficiency (and complacency), he's in for a very long and successful career.

PUNISHER MAX VOL 6 BARRACUDA TPB: I thought this storyline kicked ass, thanks to Gorlan Parlov's superlative cartooning chops, Ennis' humorously bloody storyline and the cheerful, obscene and unstoppable Barracuda.

SCOTT PILGRIM AND THE INFINITE SADNESS TPB: Bryan Lee O'Malley continued to stretch his abilities in this third book in the Scott Pilgrim saga. While not my favorite, I'm actually comforted that it wasn't--it means that O'Malley isn't complacent, is still trying to give the audience what he thinks we need, as well as what we want--but it still was jammed full of witty dialogue, madcap ideas and showstopping sequences. Awesome minus one is still awesome, as it turns out.

SHAOLIN COWBOY #6: Might've been the only issue of the title from Geoff Darrow this year, I'm not sure at the moment--but it continued to blow my mind, making me feel like I'd just read the most insane comic book by Hieronymus Bosch to date. We need more of these.

PUNISHER THE TYGER: A one-shot by Garth Ennis and John Severin that fills in Frank Castle's early years but avoids a lot of the cheap and easy pre-origin shout-outs you might expect. Instead, Ennis suggests that someone like Frank Castle--like the namesake of Blake's poem--is understandable only by the God who made him, or maybe as proof of God's non-existence altogether. Really knocked me on my ass.

SEVEN SOLDIERS #1: Grant Morrison wraps up his Seven Soldiers saga by recreating the experience of the first superhero comic you ever read. I really enjoyed all the other Seven Soliders books (and loved the Frankenstein mini) but this was my favorite because Morrison all but single-handedly kicked the Internet's ass with it.

(This, by the way, is also what Hibbs would call my "neener-neener" post as you can see how my original review talks about that "first comic book" experience without knowing Morrison's intentions, and then Morrison himself talks about them in that great interview with Ian Brill over at Newsarama a little bit later. I'm still annoyingly proud of that.)

TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #3: Every comic book gift list should have at least one book that is nothing but hysterically funny-ass shit. This is that book.

TOP 10: THE FORTY NINERS: Blah, blah, blah, Alan Moore, sensitive, blah, blah, blah. Okay, brain officially broken.

TRAILERS HC: (But even though my brain is broken, you should check this out because it's a neat little book--imagine Terry Moore drawing Blood Simple and you've got an idea of what this book is like.

VAMPIRE LOVES: I think I described this as being like a Geoffrey Brown book co-written and drawn by Charles Addams. And wow, do I think that makes me sound like an asshole now. Nonetheless, this winning book about an young Nosferatu looking for love is great reading and worth getting, no matter how much of a twerp I can be.

YOTSUBA&!: Finally, a great little overlooked comedic gem by Kiyohiko Azuma about a cute little girl and the family and neighbors she amuses. Not nearly as annoying as it sounds, I swear. Imagine, I dunno, a less-mean Japanese Seinfeld with a kid in it. Um, or maybe you shouldn't...

Oh, wait. Where's The Great Catsby (manwha that's like Chuck Jones animating a short story by Thomas "You Can't Go Home Again" Wolfe) or Love Roma (a lovely little episodic manga about first love that is utterly unique--in some places it's almost a Japanese relationship training film directed by Jim Jarmusch)? Fuck. Well, get them too, will you? I'm off to take some advil and get some dinner. I'll probably post again before the new year but, if not, have an excellent rest of 2006!

O Come All Ye Faithful: Graeme's reviews of 12/20 books.

The secret joy of the Holiday Season is that I somehow managed to find space in the middle of my day to do reviews for this week's books early. It would be a Christmas miracle if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't like half of them. NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI #1: Because you demanded it - The entire history of the Marvel Universe... retconned so that Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Strange, Professor X, Iron Man, Namor and Black Bolt murder lots of Skrulls! Yeah, that was a weird start to this series, and something to harsh the mellow that was my excitement about the potential fun that this could offer. No matter how pretty Jim Cheung's art is - and it really is, by the way - it can't overcome the bitter adolescence of Brians Bendis and Reed saying "No, they've been bastards all along - Look, they were even killing aliens when Roy Thomas was writing them, it's just that you didn't know about it until now!" as justification for the Civil Warring of the Marvel Universe. It's not as "They're raping my childhood" as Identity Crisis, but I'm getting fed up of writers finding it easier to retroactively create motivations for behavior in flashbacks and "untold stories", instead of actually trying to either do something new or at least build on what was there before. Eh, and that's mostly down to the art and remembering how much I liked Iron Man's armor back in those days.

IRON MAN/CAPTAIN AMERICA: CASUALTIES OF WAR #1: Less a story, more Marvel's way of saying to the fans, "Yes, Iron Man and Captain America used to be friends and weren't always dicks, happy now, fanboys???" And it only costs the fans $3.99 for the pleasure. Writer Christos Gage was given a pretty impossible task with this special - Have Iron Man and Captain America meet in the middle of the Civil War to talk, but NOTHING CAN HAPPEN because Civil War is already written - and it shows; there's nothing but continuity porn here, the two characters just referring to past story followed by past story followed by past story before, bizarrely, having a fistfight and walking away from each other, having resolved nothing. It's a completely pointless Crap book, made all the more so by...

IRON MAN #14: In which Captain America and Iron Man meet in the middle of the Civil War to talk. Iron Man seems to be getting the shitty end of the stick in this "event" in general; the character becomes completely confused, with his depiction varying wildly depending on who's writing the issue in question (Is he really troubled and trying to do the right thing, as in this issue? Is he a Machiavellian megalomaniac, as in anything J. Michael Straczynski writes? And, more to the point, when will Marvel realize that that doesn't make it a nuanced story as much as a clusterfuck of miscommunication between creators?) and his book doomed to repeat storypoints that happen in other books that ship on the same day (This month's Iron Man/Cap talk, last month with Tony Stark being offered the directorship of SHIELD in both this book and the same week's New Avengers). That said, this is probably the more successful of the two secret meetings of the two heroes, if only because they actually talk about the murder of Goliath and the conversation ends on a more believable plot point (Cap's side ambushes Iron Man). Sadly, the rest of the book is less interesting, especially when the Invisible Woman appears to accuse Tony of breaking up her marriage, because nothing says "strong intelligent woman who's committed to her relationship" than someone who abandons her family and then, instead of talking things over with her estranged husband, attacks a third party and blames their troubles on him. I mean, sure, it's being proactive and all, but still: Sue Richards. I know you know better than that. Eh at best, and that's not even touching the odd "Iron Man euthanizes his best friend using his magic technology telepathy" subplot.

CIVIL WAR: WAR CRIMES #1: Bringing up the rear of the Marvel books for this week, this oneshot that surprisingly turns out to be the best of the Civil War-related titles for awhile, if only because it actually answers a genuinely hanging plot point from the main series - What've the villains who aren't part of the Thunderbolts been up to while the superheroes are beating each other up? The answer, apparently, is "They've all been pawns of a game of chess between the Kingpin and Hammerhead, of all people," in what turns out to be an oddly sound, if unspectacular, Okay attempt at gritty-ish crime drama. The version of Iron Man that appears here, by the way? Easily-fooled-but-well-meaning Iron Man. Gotta get 'em all.

Now, shall we do some non-Marvel books about things other than superheroes being dicks? Let's.

THE BAKERS MEET JINGLE BELLE: So, Hibbs gave me a hard time when I was asking about this, the other day. I made some comment about Jingle Belle - which I've never read before - seeming like an okay idea, because how can you go wrong with a cute elf girl? His response, loud in volume if low in wordcount, was that That was all there is to it. She's a cute elf girl. That's all. It's the ultimate in meaningless high concept: Jingle Belle! She's a cute elf girl! And... she's a cute elf girl! Yay! Sadly, having read this special crossover between said cute elf girl and Kyle Baker's autobiographical family cartoons, I have to say: He's right. And worse, once you take the autobiographical away from Baker's The Bakers, then they're just as bland: They're a cute family with a grumpy dad and smart mom and fun lovin' kids! And that's all! Put both flavors together, and you end up with something that's completely forgettable, and (surprisingly, considering the creators involved) boring. Crap, sadly.

CRIMINAL #3: Worth mentioning not because it's continuing to be very well done, although it is, but because the change of pace in this issue towards something less heist/crime/plot driven (even though it is, undoubtedly, the calm before the storm of plot resolution in the next couple of issues) makes me want to see Brubaker and Philips try their hand at something in the romance genre at some point. Very Good, as ever.

WALK-IN #1: Dave Stewart - Pop star, very very bad artist (he tried to remake himself as a Damien Hirst wannabe in the mid-90s, if I remember correctly), filmmaker of movies starring All Saints, and now the man behind Jeff Parker's latest comic. Ignore the horrendous cover, with the outlandish breasts and attitude that you won't find on the inside, and you'll find something that's not quite there yet but interesting enough to catch your attention. Right now, it feels like a Vertigo book from when that line launched (Strippers and slackers and realities crossing over. It's practically early '90s Milligan. Just add sexual neuroses and wordplay), but in a good way... Kind of aimless but charming, nonetheless. It's cautiously Good right now (with a stronger artist - someone like Brendan McCarthy would be perfect, but anyone who could make reality a bit grimier and the fantasy more fantastic would do - I would be much less cautious), but then, I've always been a sucker for stories like this.

Y: THE LAST MAN #52: I promise you, Brian K. Vaughan - If you don't get Beth and Yorick together by the time this series ends, I will be pointlessly upset and probably write something bitchy about you here. So, you know, not much change, really. But the last page cliffhanger of this series teases that we really may see the two lovers reunited after all, and reinforces the feeling of everything coming, however slowly, to a close. Still Good after all these years, and still probably the strongest Vaughan book in the long run.

PICK OF THE WEEK is Criminal, if we're going by, you know, what the best book of the bunch is. If you're going for novelty, though, then go for Walk In. It's interesting. PICK OF THE WEAK will be the Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties of War book, because there is no reason for it to exist apart from Marvel's omniverous desire for the almighty dollar. TRADE OF THE WEEK, although I haven't read anything released this week, is probably the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA HEREBY ELECTS... collection, because that really goes straight to the heart of my superhero nostalgia. That said, the new Fables trade, WOLVES, is also out this week... Me, I've been reading an early Christmas present: that big ETERNALS BY JACK KIRBY collection that came out a few months ago. Boy, that Kirby liked to just throw ideas out there, didn't he...?

I'm still going to try to do that trades only post, by the way...

Arriving 12/20 (Feast)

If you were asking where all the comics have been the last few weeks, well, here's your answer, honeys. They're shipping this week. I'm totally crazy right now: Rob took his saved week of vacation this week, so I'm behind the counter every day, all day for the next while. As I think (?) I mentioned last time Rob went vaca, its really REALLY good for me to pull this duty. Exercises muscles I forgot I had, sharpens my skills. I mean, after 17 years of selling funny books, there are bits where it becomes a grind, y'know? So being thrown into the melee is really damn good.

And I think I totally nailed all 22 "Yeah, I want to buy a graphic novel for my [relative], but I totally have no idea what I'm talking about" conversations I've had in the last 3 days. That's way up from previous years, on a events-per-day average, so I'm happy.

I've been a productive little beaver, too, on top of the 79 other things that have transpired in Real Life (our cabinet fell off the wall, we're begining to tour the public schools for Ben's introduction to K, CEO and TaW last week, etc. etc.), I managed to go through the last 4 months of Biffage (unsalable dreck pulled from the rack) -- we really choked on a lot of the OYL/post-IC titles, yow! -- as well as sort through the last 6 months of receipts in preperation for all of the Year-End stuff.

Totally non-comics parenthetically, I decided that Ben's Christmas present from me this year should be a Hot Wheel (or equivilant) track. I have fond memories of playing with that flexible orange track as a kid. But, as far as I can tell, they're not just making track any longer. Everything is all themed sets (I could get the Spidey-man v Dr. Octopus tack, or a prehistoric Attack set with a working volcano, or all kinds of other 'splody, active set. Even the most basic basic set is built around a battery-powered accelerator. Man, am I alone in thinking that gravity used to be enough? But it doesn't look like you can just get track, foo.

Anyway, I need to go to sleep, and I haven't the foggiest notion why I'm still up typing, other than, dunno, I miss it.

Here's this week's comics:

52 WEEK #33 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #47 (A) AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #47 AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES II #4 (OF 8) BAKERS MEET JINGLE BELLE (ONESHOT) BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #213 BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #171 BIRDS OF PREY #101 BOMB QUEEN VOL 2 #3 (OF 3) CABLE DEADPOOL #35 CATWOMAN #62 CHECKMATE #9 CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #9 (OF 11) CIVIL WAR WAR CRIMES ONE SHOT CONAN #35 CRIMINAL #3 CRIMINAL MACABRE TWO RED EYES #1 (OF 4) DARKMAN VS ARMY OF DARKNESS #2 (OF 4) DEADMAN #5 DEANNA OF THE DEAD #2 (A) DEVILS PANTIES #7 ELEPHANTMEN #5 FABLES #56 FANTASTIC FOUR #541 CW FIREBLAST ADVENTURES IN THE 30TH CENTURY #0 FRESHMEN VOL 2 #2 FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #15 GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5 HUMAN ERROR PROCESSOR #3 (OF 6) HELIOS UNDER THE GUN #2 (OF 4) HELLBLAZER #227 HIGHLANDER #2 ION #9 (OF 12) IRON MAN #14 CW IRON MAN CAPTAIN AMERICA CASUALTIES OF WAR ONE SHOT CW JOHN WOOS SEVEN BROTHERS AMANO CVR #3 JUGHEAD #178 JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #127 KANAS ISLAND #1 KRYPTO THE SUPER DOG #4 (OF 6) LONE RANGER #3 MAINTENANCE #1 MAN CALLED KEV #5 (OF 5) MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #8 MS MARVEL #10 NEW AVENGERS #26 NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI #1 (OF 5) OMEGA MEN #3 (OF 6) PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND #3 (OF 8) PUNISHER #42 RAMAYAN 3392 AD #4 RED MENACE #2 (OF 6) RED SONJA #17 REX MUNDI #3 SCOOBY DOO #115 SECRET SIX #6 (OF 6) SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #33 SHADOWPACT #8 SHE-HULK 2 #14 SIMPSONS COMICS #125 SPIKE ASYLUM #4 (OF 5) TEEN TITANS #42 TESTAMENT #13 THUNDERBOLTS #109 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #103 UNION JACK #4 (OF 4) URSA MINORS #4 VAULT OF MICHAEL ALLRED #3 (OF 4) WALK-IN #1 WARHAMMER 40K #1 WASTELAND #5 X-MEN FIRST CLASS #4 (OF 8) Y THE LAST MAN #52 ZOMBIE #4 (OF 4)

Books / Mags / Stuff ACTION PHILOSOPHERS VOL 2 GIANT SIZED THING TP ALBION TP AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS ONCE AND FUTURE TP ATHENA VOLTAIRE COLL WEB COMICS TP BLURRED VISION VOL 2 GN CINEFEX #108 DEC 2006 COMICS BUYERS GUIDE MAR 2007 #1626 CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS SER3 WEAPONER AF DAN BRERETONS DROP DEAD GIRL & OTHER DRAWINGS SC DAREDEVIL FATHER HC DARKNESS COMPENDIUM EDITION TP EDU MANGA EINSTEIN GN FABLES VOL 8 WOLVES TP GOLGO 13 VOL 6 GN JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA HEREBY ELECTS TP JUXTAPOZ JAN 2007 VOL 14 #1 LITTLE LULU VOL 13 TOO MUCH FUN TP MAGDALENA VOL 1 TP MASTERS OF THE COMIC BOOK UNIVERSE REVEALED SC MOME VOL 6 GN NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 6 TP NEW ADVENTURES OF JESUS THE SECOND COMING GN PREVIEWS VOL XVII #1 PROJECT X SEVEN ELEVEN GN SONIC THE HEDGEHOG ARCHIVES VOL 2 TP SUPERMAN FOR TOMORROW VOL 2 TP THOR BLOOD OATH TP TROUBLE WITH GIRLS VOL 2 TP WIZARD COMICS MAG RAMOS ART CVR #184 (HELLBOY REPLACEMENT) WOLVERINE BY CLAREMONT & MILLER PREMIERE HC WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ GN

Man, that's a lot of stuff (including 5 [!] CIVIL WAR crossovers this week -- last week, and [I think?] the week before had NONE. *sigh*)

What looks good to you?

-B

I am Retsel Ffej: Graeme reviews last week's books.

Well, the weather outside? Frightful. And that fire? So delightful. And since there's no place to go, and baby, it's cold outside, your lips sure do look delicious... No, wait, I'm getting my songs mixed up. But, as I said in my comments to Jeff's reviews, he and I are at yuletide opposites this week. Let's call him the Grinch and me Good King Wenceslas, okay? 52 WEEK THIRTY-TWO: There are issues of this where I enjoy it more than usual, and I'm not entirely sure why; this may be the most enjoyable week of the series for me since week nineteen, perhaps because it feels like the biggest "reveal" since that issue. Except I'm not entirely sure what's been revealed; Is Ralph dead, having killed himself way back in week one, and everything that's happened to him since then has been some kind of near-death thing? Has he been shown that there's no such thing as death? And is there no such thing as death, seeing as we're told twice that death is just a trick of time, and this series is all about time being broken? The reason, maybe, that this issue has the same effect on me as the (spoiler!) Skeets is evil issue is because both of them don't offer plot resolution as much as advancement that just opens up more questions. Because, yeah sure, it's fun to watch Black Adam fly about and be grumpy for awhile, but the glimpses at a bigger point to the whole series are what keeps me involved in the book. Good.

ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY #17: I'm completely conflicted on Chris Ware. On the one hand, I find him to be an amazing graphic designer and his techniques precise and breathtaking - the exhibition of his artwork that was here a couple of years (?maybe?) ago was stunning, especially the roughs and the pencils to his pages - but more than not, his end-result always feels too clinical to me, for some reason - The same preciseness and cleanliness that I appreciate as a designer acting as an anaesthetic to the story that he's trying to tell, bringing in a distance to whatever emotional core that the writing is trying to reach. It leaves the end result feeling very artificial and studied, to me (Yes, even on Jimmy Corrigan, which blew my little mind on first reading, but didn't work for me on subsequent attempts). It's the same thing here - the writing on Rusty Brown is layered and very Altman-esque (or perhaps more Paul Thomas Anderson-esque, come to think of it), but visually it doesn't work with the imagery that Ware uses in anything other than the scenes with Rusty and Chalky; the simplicity and iconography that's used there fits, but as soon as we move to the sister or the teacher (and the teacher being a Chris Ware is something that is cute, but I can't work out if it's in a good way or a horrible way, yet), I wanted something... more. Or different. Or both. Technically, the book is beautifully designed and the writing is interesting, even on the shorter gag strips. But it didn't work for me; I didn't get it, and so it ended up just being Okay.

I'm going to alt-comics hell now.

DCU INFINITE HOLIDAY SPECIAL: It may not be the best holiday-related release this week, but that's purely because of the weaker stories in here (That would be the Green Lantern and Shazam ones, in particular, although I didn't really get that much from the first solo Batwoman story, either). But the stories that did work are very enjoyable indeed; Ian Boothby's Flash and Joe Kelly's Supergirl are firmly in the sentimental schmaltz category, despite the selfconsciously grumpy stars (Although Kelly's take on Supergirl finally works here, helped enormously by Ale Garza's art - Hey, DC? This is the guy you should have on the regular Supergirl book; he has the "big eyes" thing from Michael Turner, but it works because his style in general is more cartoony. Also, he does a good grumpy Girl of Steel. Seriously; he'd be a much better fit than Ian Chuchill - and the fact that the story, for once, doesn't revolve around Kara "trying to find her place" in the DC Universe) and hit those points well and good, but the stars of this particular show are Bill Willingham and Kelley Puckett, for the Shadowpact and Superman stories, both of which have a sense of humor and ridiculousness that nonetheless end up as some of the most heartwarming things DC have published all year. Both of those stories have great art, as well; the Shadowpact one is illustrated by Invincible's Cory Walker, and Pete Woods shows yet again that he should be a massive superstar artist with his Silver Age tale on the characters in the Superman short. Those last two stories are Excellent, and half of the book is a high Good, but the whole package is let down by the not-so-good stories and, really, is just Okay.

THE ESCAPISTS #6: Hey, how did this have a last issue that got Very Good after the - to me, at least - mediocre middle issues? Perhaps because it felt as if the story was about the characters again instead of the plot; the resolution of the plots that were set in motion over the last couple of issues even happen off-panel and are explained to us in expositionary narration here, allowing Brian Vaughan to get back to the more important themes of escaping/embracing family bonds that the earlier issues were about, and I couldn't be happier. Perhaps it's just my reading of the issue, but the move away from literal plot dynamics to a more abstract focus gives this issue my favorite scene of the entire series, where Case realizes that working at a New York Graphic Design House isn't for her. There's a comment in the lettercol at the end of the issue where editor Diana Schultz makes some comment about wishing this series was an ongoing, but I'm glad it isn't; the story ends perfectly with the last page here. I'd love to see Vaughan do more about creation, but these characters? They're finished. They've escaped.

GEN 13 #3: Gail introduces a really strange religious tone to the series with this issue - Not only is one of the mysterious voyeurs revealed to be a minister who preaches against sins like, oh, logging onto the internet to watch snuff porn, shall we say, but the first supervillains the team have are called "The Heavenly Choir" and have a Christian theme to their powers and look. Is this something from the original series, or an unexpected new flavor particular to this version...? Either way, it's a swerve I didn't see coming, and end up feeling confused by; what is the morality of this book? Are we being preached to about buying books that are often more about violence than anything else? What's with the religious iconography...? Is it shock tactics, or is there something more going on behind the surface...? Right now, it feels too early to tell, but I'm also left, three issues into the series, still unsure about what book I'm reading from issue to issue... A cautious Good, but I wonder where everything's going here.

GHOST RIDER #6: You know, Daniel Way gets a lot of shit online for decompressing his stories, but I actually kind of enjoyed the first half of this two-parter (with art by Richard Corben, which is why Hibbs pushed it on me in the first place - It's the best I've seen Corben's stuff look in awhile, as well); it moves along at a nice enough pace for you to understand what's happening in both timeframes. I mean, it's still not my cup of tea and all, but it's well enough done, you know? Good.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #4: This really should be more exciting, shouldn't it? But it all feels like overkill, for some reason. Eh.

THE SPIRIT #1: The most enjoyable book out this week, and almost moreso because of its deliberately light and throwaway nature. It's pulp, and has no pretentions to be anything more than pulp... But Darwyn Cooke's pulp still manages to be better than most other creators' attempts to create something profound and lasting (Spider-Man: Reign comes to mind), which either says something about him, or about almost everyone else working in the medium these days. It's the details that stick around from here, more than the plot, as much as Jeff didn't dig most of them - The ridiculous name of the TV anchor (Ginger Coffee) or the scrolls along the bottom of the TV screen ("two headed killer puppy captures jurors' hearts"), or the Spirit hiding inside the car, or Ebony getting a hard time because of his name - because the only way that stories like this work is because of the execution, not the idea... Cooke's art is, as ever, beautiful, and all the better for avoiding an Eisner pastiche. Because I'm a pessimist, I'm convinced that this book won't last two years in this market - It doesn't tie in with any Universe, it doesn't follow the storytelling conventions or tone of the popular books, and it has a sly humor that doesn't go for the obvious Wizard-esque cheap jokes - but for now, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. Excellent.

WOLVERINE #49: And this turns out, surprisingly, to be the Holiday book of the week. It's a fill-in issue and steals the plot from Die Hard, but Goddammit if there's not enough enjoyment in seeing Wolverine standing atop a pile of (potentially dead) evil dwarves dressed as Santa's elves saying "Feels weird fightin' people smaller than me. I think I like it." Or his continued assertions that the bombs in the building aren't real until they start going off. Only the end of the issue - a rushed climax that's visually confused and out of tone with the rest of the book - disappoints, but up until that point, the whole thing is a successful (culture?) clash played for laughs as much as action thrills and spills. Based on this issue, I'm tempted to look at whatever writer Rob Williams gets up to next. Very Good, and who would've thought I would've said that about a Wolverine book?

WONDER MAN: MY FAIR SUPERHERO #1: Am I the only person who is bored of the stories that start in dystopian futures and then flash back to the main story? The start of this book really annoyed me because of that, and I'm not entirely sure why. It felt unnecessary, an attempt to try and make this story more "important" and give it more weight, and kind of working against the tone of the rest of the story, which is closer to Peter David's usual lighthearted schtick with injokes and puns. Although it may be that the main story feels more light than it's meant to, thanks to Andrew Currie's pencils, which are very unusual for a Marvel book - imagine John McCrea, but moreso, and you're kind of close. I think the inking makes the art look worse than it actually is, but that may just be me. Overall, though, it's an Eh book that doesn't quite gel together yet.

PICK OF THE WEEK would be The Spirit, because, dude. It was great. PICK OF THE WEAK would be Justice League, because I'm still waiting to find out how the Red Tornado can manage to possess a corpse and give it superpowers, even as we see bad guys steal his robot body because that's supposed to be the thing that made him so powerful. TRADE OF THE WEEK is an old one - Essential Luke Cage, volume 2. What better time of year to read about a man who likes to yell "Sweet Christmas"?

Coming up this week, if I have time: That trades only post I keep promising to do. But don't hold your breath.

The Sick Trick: Jeff's Review of 12/13 Books.

I'm not capital-S Sick but I am little-s sick: mildly feverish and runny nose to beat the band, sore throat when I wake up, etc. Combine that with the newsletter deadline and a shortened workday on Friday so I could attend the non-CE holiday party, and you've got the makings for a whiny, weepy & short set of reviews. Speaking of whining and wailing, has anyone made the jump from Blogger to Blogger Beta and, more specifically, the jump from Haloscan to Blogger Beta's improved commenting system? We're going to be making the jump soon (like by the end of the year soon) and I'm trying to figure out if I should muck about with the template so that Haloscan is still accessible. Any comments or advice you'd want to share would be welcome.

And with that:

52 WEEK #32: It would've been nice, although too much to ask apparently, that Ralph's tour through the magical side of the DCU showed how the universe's magical side had been broken post-Crisis rather than highlighting how much it's always been broken. Here, Mr. Dibny gets an "all is love; time is an illusion" message from Rama Kushna that doesn't quite seem to jibe with, you know, hell and everything that Ralph's already visited--to me, it just underlines how the magical DCU is a bunch of utterly contradictory ideas and intentions awkwardly jammed under one celestial roof. An overall Eh issue, I thought.

BATMAN #660: I spent most of the issue thinking, "Johnny Karaoke? That's an awesome idea! No, wait, that's a horrible idea! No, wait, awesome!" It seems to require a certain balancing act that maybe Mr. Morrison could have pulled off, but Mr. Ostrander certainly cannot. Finally, that final line of Batman's ("Get ready to bleed.") seems very pre-OYL Bats, doesn't it? (And also kind of silly: is the bad guy supposed to let out the choke on his corpuscles or something?) Considering this shipped only two weeks after the last one, you'd think the editor might've taken a little more time to straighten things out. Drops to an Eh for me, because I expect more from an issue with a character named Johnny Karaoke, and more from an issue of Batman than a "hmm, what've we got in the inventory drawer?" approach.

BLADE #4: Despite that awesome cover and the hilarious blurb from the Spurge, and an enjoyably candid letters page, I was pretty meh about the issue--I just didn't buy that a body-shifting creature would work itself into a corner that easily. It's still probably the best Blade title Marvel's ever published, but my OK rating is still being a bit too generous, probably.

BULLET POINTS #2: Hibbs entered his judgment of "Who cares?" back with the first issue, and this second issue proves him right on the money. While there's some lovely visuals--that Hulk rampage looked fantastic, I thought--the point seems less "how completely different the world will turn out" and more, "and that's how Matt Murdock became Galactus's herald" which I had more than enough of back when I was reading What If. Will likely prove to Hibbs right, in short, and utterly Eh-worthy as a result.

DAMNED #3: This is the issue in which I realized I will be picking up the trade--it's clever and sharp and not quite readable without the other issues nearby. Good stuff, though, and worth picking up.

ESCAPISTS #6: Despite the character beats feeling a bit rushed, I liked the ending to this quite a lot--it seemed very faithful to the Jack Kirbyishness of the Escapist, as our heroes miraculously turn defeat into victory. It's kind of a shame that Dark Horse finally gets a creative team that can handle Chabon's ideas with something approaching the original novel's alacrity and it has to end after only six issues. I guess that's the way it rolls in our to-the-trade industry but it's a shame I won't have more Good issues to be on the lookout for.

EX MACHINA #25: Took a character I didn't much care about--Bradbury--in a title I've been cooling on, and manages to turn it all around on a dime. My bipolar love affair with Ex Machina continues as I found this to be a pretty Good little done-in-one.

EXILES ANNUAL #1: I liked just about everything this book did--took the classic trope of two versions of the same team battling one another, added a shiny red reset button for anyone who might want to use it in the future, and brought back one of my favorite villains--but I was left pretty cold about the way it did it all. If nothing else, the two teams, despite having largely different line-ups, had essentially the same characterization and that underscored how generic and samey the title has felt for a while. Eh, unfortunately.

GHOST RIDER #6: Bizarro comics week continues as the most annoyingly disposable title in Marvel's line-up becomes compelling thanks to the addition of artist Richard Corben. The story was pretty disposable, cutting badly back and forth between the present and the past, but Corben's art made it all spooky, funny and strange: Hibbs pointed the title out to me because he was impressed with how Corben made the Ghost Rider really look like a flaming skeleton, but I thought Corben brought a glitchy stoner washout look to both Blaze and Blaze's cellmate that was similarly fresh and appealing. I hate advocating books solely on the basis of the art, but for $2.99 you get some damn Good art here.

SPIRIT #1: Now, as long as I'm advocating books for the art, I can totally give this a Good: Cooke's art and visual storytelling are amazing and I kind of can't believe we're going to have the good luck to get it at $2.99 a pop rather than hefty prestige format prices. But once I look past the art, I think this first issue runs dangerously close to being a flop. As relieved as I am that Cooke didn't try for the difficult mix of noir and vaudeville Eisner utilized, going for just the noir isn't going to cut it. If The Pill--more visually grotesque than any Eisner villain I can remember--is an indicator of where the book is heading, then it's a road I'm not going to enjoy travelling down. (And if the little crawlers at the bottom of the NNN broadcast scenes are indications of what we're in for if Cooke tries to develop the humor angle, I'm not too optimistic about that development, either.) I thought the scenes with Ebony were quite good, however, and the art really is first-class so I'm definitely along for the ride. But I think even I weren't feeling sick and lousy, I'd be griping about this title. I guess we'll see, won't we?

WOLVERINE #49: Hmmm. You'd think sticking Wolverine in the middle of Die Hard would be great in a "hot dog wrapped in bacon" kind of way, right? In fact, it's kinda lame although compelling art & some clever dialogue will half-convince you otherwise--Wolverine has to share the spotlight with an underdeveloped John McClane type and the story doesn't end so much as messily stop, and so a lot of the set-up doesn't deliver. (The whole thing suffers by comparison to the iconic wit of the cover, too.) If I didn't have to pay an extra buck for it, it'd be OK, but at that price it too gets consigned to the endless fires of Eh-dition.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Either of the Vaughan books, Damned if you can get all the issues all at once, maybe Ghost Rider, and maybe The Spirit.

PICK OF THE WEAK: 52, Batman, Bullet Points, and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn't get around to reading.

TRADE PICK: Finally, the real reason why I'm cranky comes out: I've got both The Drifting Classroom and Sgt. Frog sitting unread in my pull box where they'll stay until next week. It pains me, it really does.

But I'm sure you weren't nearly as cranky as I was. What'd you think?

Arriving 12/13

The one Suck Ass thing about having a toddler? They get sick, a lot (well, and then so do you) -- I'm not sick this week, Ben is, which means he's not going to school, which means my delicately stacked Big Ass Pile of Too Much Work gets thrown into all sorts of disarray. And then the blackline for the March-shipping books shows up at the store, joy!

Add the holidays to that (both worrying about the store, and hassling with family commitments), and I HAVE NO TIME TO BREATH.

So, here's what's shipping this week, and now I have to figure out how I'm going to get my next TILTING written by Wednesday....

100 BULLETS #79 2000 AD #1514 2000 AD #1515 24 NIGHTFALL #2 (OF 6) 52 WEEK #32 AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #3 ATHENA VOLTAIRE FLIGHT O/T FALCON APE ED #3 AVENGERS NEXT #3 (OF 5) BATMAN #660 BATMAN STRIKES #28 BATTLE POPE #12 BETTY #161 BLADE #4 BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #120 BULLET POINTS #2 (OF 5) CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #8 COLD HEAT #1 DAMNED #3 DCU INFINITE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL DEVI #6 DMZ #14 DORK TOWER #35 ESCAPISTS #6 (OF 6) EX MACHINA #25 EXILES ANNUAL #1 FALLEN ANGEL IDW #11 FANTASTIC FOUR THE END #3 (OF6) FEAR AGENT #9 FIRESTORM THE NUCLEAR MAN #32 GARGOYLES #2 GEN 13 #3 GHOST RIDER #6 GIRLS #20 GREEN ARROW #69 GREEN LANTERN CORPS #7 HERO KILLERS ONE SHOT HUNTER KILLER #10 JLA CLASSIFIED #30 JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #252 (NOTE PRICE) JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #16 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #4 MAD MAGAZINE #473 MAGICIAN APPRENTICE #4 (OF 12) MARTIAN MANHUNTER #5 (OF 8) MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #19 NEW X-MEN #33 OMAC #6 (OF 8) OUTER ORBIT #1 (OF 4) PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #108 PS238 #19 ROBIN #157 SANCTUARY #2 (OF 6) SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE SLEEPOF REASON #1 (OF 5) SONIC X #15 SPIRIT #1 STORMWATCH PHD #2 STRANGE GIRL #12 STREET FIGHTER LEGENDS SAKURADOGAN CVR A #4 (OF 4) TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #3 (OF 8) TRIALS OF SHAZAM #4 (OF 12) ULTIMATE X-MEN #77 WILDSTORM FINE ART SPOTLIGHT JIM LEE WOLVERINE #49 WONDER MAN #1 (OF 5) X-23 TARGET X #1 (OF 6) X-FACTOR #14 X-MEN PHOENIX WARSONG #4 (OF 5)

Books / Mags / Stuff ALTER EGO TOTH ISSUE #63 BATTLE ANGEL ALITA LAST ORDERVOL 8 TP BLANK VOL 1 GN (OF 3) BREAKING UP FASHION HIGH GN BUCKY O HARE AND THE TOAD MENACE GN CRYING FREEMAN VOL 4 TP DOOMED MAGAZINE #4 DRIFTING CLASSROOM VOL 3 TP FORTEAN TIMES #217 FRANK CHO WOMEN SELECTED DRAWINGS & ILLUSTRATIONS TP FRUITS BASKET VOL 15 GN (OF 19) GIANT ROBOT #45 GOON WICKED INCLINATIONS VOL 5 TPB HEROES REBORN AVENGERS TP JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES VOL 5 TP LEES TOY REVIEW DEC 2006 #170 LONE RACER GN MAIL VOL 1 TP MC2 NEW COMICS STORIES BY MIDLAND COMICS COLLECTIVE MIKE HOFFMAN ODYSSEY MY TRAVELS IN FANTASY ART BOOK NARUTO VOL 12 TP NEW TEEN TITANS TERRA INCOGNITO TP PHOENIX VOL 9 TP PORTENT VOL 1 TP PUNISHER MAX FROM FIRST TO LAST HC SEA OF RED VOL 3 DEADLIGHTS TP SGT FROG VOL 12 GN (OF 12) SUPERMAN THE GREATEST STORIESEVER TOLD VOL 2 TP SUPREME POWER VOL 2 HC UNIVERSE X VOL 1 TP NEW PTG VIDEO WATCHDOG #128 WOLVERINE ORIGINS & ENDINGS TP WRITE NOW #14

What looks Good to you?

-B

Jeff's UnCleverly Titled Reviews of 12/6 Books.

Ahhh, the holiday season. Does anyone ever end up with enough time to do what they need to? I was in such a rush my original title for this post pretty much ripped off Graeme's without even realizing it. Oy. But enough of that. Here's this:

52 WEEK #31: On its own, the issue didn't do too much for me but, combined with the comments thread for Graeme's post, I found the whole "who is Supernova?" thing kinda interesting, as cases are made there for both the Flash and the Atom. (If the second "key" Ralph refers to is "Keystone City," then I'm thinking The Flash...) Unfortunately, as writers try to stay one step ahead of the Internet hivemind, they're also more than happy to cheat like nobody's business. ("Sugar? A-a-and Spike?! You were Supernova?" "Glpxl!") In short, I guess the issue is Good for keeping the World Wide Web merrily abuzz, but it honestly didn't strike me as much more than OK.

BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #1: Whilce Portacio's weird artistic tics with all the grimacing and finely detailed clothing folds synch up to Batman surprisingly well, and Diggle does a fine job of taking his cues from Batman Begins, but there's still an overwhelming waft of "Why?" coming off this title. Will this book really be anything more than Legends of the Dark Knight with a temporary shot in the arm saleswise? OK book, but, wow, do cheap sales ploys leave me cold these days.

BEYOND #6: I'm not much of a spoiler dude normally but...killing off Gravity? Utter cheapness, barely excused by caption blab suggesting Gravity might be coming back...or will he? Kind of a drag since, now that I think about it, the Marvel Universe might've been better served by having some--or all--of the other characters axed. I liked most of the art, and most of the story for this, so I'm giving it a Good, but I'm pretty aware the book coasts on the feelings of C-Lister love a certain segment of Marvel fanboys like myself might possess. Although no one really expected much from this, it could've been much, much better, frankly.

DESOLATION JONES #8: The exhausted world-weariness, so much a part of Ellis's work and authorial pose, is taken to new heights as Jones tries to track down an old friend and ruminates about his past in a Los Angeles set, if the skies are any indication, in a universe in the last stages of thermodynamic heatdeath. I'm curious to see where the PKD stuff is going (by which I mean I'm only half-convinced it's going to work), the art is amazing, and the writing is strong. Even with my reservations, I'd call it Very Good work.

DETECTIVE COMICS #826: Yeah, let's see this one end up in one of DC's holiday anthologies--I mean, it is a done-in-one Christmas story, isn't it? I liked it a lot, being a sucker for a decent Joker story, a good done-in-one, and a nasty little hook of a story idea, although I've got some quibbleage (the set-up seemed a bit forced, and, like any fan of the Joker, I've got maddeningly specific ideas about how the character should be handled that should have no real weight or bearing in a review that nonetheless affect my reading experience). Let's call is a super high Good, or a low Very Good, depending on where your own biases might lie.

DOCTOR STRANGE OATH #3: Too bad I didn't try harder to push that "New Fun" idea down the Internet's throat, because this book certainly falls under that banner: it's light and funny and clever with an affection that keeps the book from feeling campy (or else it's camp of the very highest order, the kind Ms. Sontag might have characterized as laughing the laughter of the inclusive). Good stuff, although I can't figure out if I would like it more or less if I was an actual Dr. Strange fan.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1: Somewhere in all the frenzied jibbity-jab and face-meltery of Identity Crisis, I lost faith in Geoff Johns. So, in place of all the potentially cool stuff in this book, all I saw were the faults--why have Mr. America mention at the top of the page that he'd ruin his friend's career if his identity was exposed, just to have him unmask at the bottom? Why doesn't his friend know that the murder victims are in Mr. America's house, since he knows Mr. America's identity? For that matter, is Mr. America so busy telling us his backstory that he doesn't realize he's running into his own home? Huh? Who? What? Consequently, whereas others see a exciting bit of (to use Graeme's phrase) continuity porn, I feel like I'm reading the first issue of "In Pictopia: The Maxi-Series." Even the appearance of a charming character like Ma Hunkel's granddaugher makes me worry about what the poor thing is gonna be put through by the time issue #50 rolls around. It's probably Good, this issue, but to be honest, I've lost nearly all my appetite for this kind of thing and really can't rouse more than an Eh.

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #22: As with the Spidey-suit story last issue, Fred Van Lente takes a fun part of the mythos(the Hobgoblin/Green Goblin schism) and boils away the absurdly byzantine continuity to get a fun workable story. However, I gotta say that reading a Spider-Man book without ongoing soap-operaish subplots is a bit like getting your cat neutered--sure, the place stinks of cat piss a lot less and you don't get your arm sliced open half as much, but you can tell the experience has grown markedly less catlike at the same time, you know? Highly OK, but if we could get some emotional growth and development in there--just a panel or two per issue!--I'd be much happier.

MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Marvel's got this weird "boutique pricing" thing going, have you noticed? It's like they take stuff they clearly don't give a shit about (like that follow-up to Joe Casey's Avengers miniseries, or this book) and dump it on the market with a higher price tag than their flagship books, as if double-daring the customer to buy it. It's a drag too, because the stories in the book are actually a lot of fun (that follow up to last year's Fin Fang Four was awesome, but I thought the AIM holiday party was quite enjoyable, too) but padded with horrific filler (I don't know who didn't come through with their eight pages, but the hideous rip-offness of the cover gallery was only topped by those bullshit "ornaments"). You know I'm too much of a cheap bastard to recommend a $3.99 book if I think it's overpriced, and it's a shame because a lot of the material is quite Good. The presentation, however, is Crap.

NEW TALES OF OLD PALOMAR #1: Back in the old days, when Fantagraphics was stuck in its loveless marriage with the direct market, they might've called this book "Crisis on Infinite Palomars" in a fit of cheeky snark and the title would've been kinda appropriate--Beto throws in lots of half-page intro shots that would be meaningless to the new reader but sends all kinds of pangs to people like me who remember reading the first Heartbreak Soup story more than two decades previous. So, in its own way, this book is continuity porn just as much as JSA #1, but, unlike JSA where some superhero beats up a villain and then angrily asks "Now who's a bitch?!", most of the extreme material (which Beto normally wallows in)is absent or dialed down to the point of genuine discretion. The story's charming with an enjoyably disquieting undercurrent, the art is open, relaxed and vibrant, and the price tag is about three dollars more than I'm comfortable with (because I'm Cheapy McChintzalot, remember?) and I'm going with an OK because I think there's gotta be a real perfect storm as far as the customer profile goes (an old, indy, spendthrift completist, essentially) in order for the book to really resonate.

NEWUNIVERSAL #1: Arguably, Ellis's recasting the world as a different one from ours (one where China is ascending in importance even more rapidly, for example) obviates the whole point behind the original New Universe, but I can't really see how he could have stuck to "the world outside your window" without the book reading like Supreme Power or Morrison's first issue of The Authority or any number of things out there (Heroes, as G. points out). Instead, it seems like Ellis, the midnight ruminator, is looking at The New Universe through the prism of Watchmen, which potentially might be really interesting since, after all, it was through Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, not The New Universe, from which an entire generation of comic book creators took their cues for "realistic" comics.

Sadly, I had more fun typing that paragraph than I did reading this issue. This ground is very well-tilled by now, and there's not much to the plot or the characters that suggests that we're going to get anything other than a crop of the same old mung with differently colored leaves and shoots. I'm going with an optimstic OK, mainly because Ellis can take his analysis of genre conventions into interesting areas if he feels like it, so I'll see what later issues bring.

NIGHTWING #127: Considering how Dan Didio was ready to off Nightwing in IC but didn't, the meta-conceit of Nightwing clawing his way out of a grave where he's been buried alive is kinda cute. And while, normally, the old-school genericism of Wolfman and Jurgens would leave me cold, but here it's almost comforting, like Wolfman's baloney is the perfect complement to Jurgens' whitebread and mayo and Nightwing's good old processed American cheese. If that strikes you as the most left-handed of compliments (or the most damning of culinary analogies), it is: I read this issue and thought it was pretty OK but I also felt kinda blucky about myself. That's the kind of issue this is.

OUTSIDERS #43: If you've ever ridden one of San Francisco's electric busses, you know what it's like to read The Outsiders--at the slightest touch of the accelerator, the bus leaps halfway up a hill, and when the driver takes his foot off, the whole thing comes to a shuddering, old-lady-spilling halt. So, while this issue shoulda been awesome, really--it's actually pretty cool that Winick has had this whole master plan clearly worked out from the very first issue and, finally, three and a half years later, we finally find out what it is--it's comes as off as just one more spastic jerk contributing to a feeling of superhero motion sickness. It should've been better than Eh, but for me, it really wasn't.

SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1: No, no, Kaare, you've got to do it the way Mark Millar does it: with subtlety. I did like how the bow tie made Peter Parker look like the palest disciple of Louis Farrakhan ever, though. Pretty, but Awful.

STAN LEE MEETS SILVER SURFER: Almost worth it for the full-page of Galactus saying to Stan: "Jeezis, would you shut this guy up already?!" But, it's $3.99 so it's really not. That reprint didn't really do Stan any favors, either, since John Buscema apparently didn't bother to mention on the back of his artwork why Spidey and the Surfer were fighting in the first place. Also, since The Surfer was apparently a breaking point between Lee & Kirby, I wonder if this issue, being the last, was meant by some clever staffer to underscore how Lee's relevance pretty much dissipated once Kirby left, but that's neither here nor there. Eh, in any event.

SUPERGIRL #12: Very different from the issue described over at DC, and probably much better since it features the art of the glorious Amanda Conner, which adds immeasurably to its charms. It's just a fill-in issue, and it's still slightly skeevy, but it was I thought it was Good.

ULTIMATE VISION #1: Mike Carey writes a competent follow-up to the Ultimate Galactus saga, and Brandon Peterson apparently likes drawing himself some robo-boobs and ass, so I guess it's OK. I'm sure if I liked robo-boobs and ass, I'd rate it higher.

UNCANNY X-MEN #481: Finally, some X-Men in my X-Men book! And Rachel is going to have a doomed romance with the guy from Final Fantasy VII! Awesome! Or highly OK, maybe. But either way, I'm interested again.

WALKING DEAD #33: Completely botched, if you ask me. Sure, sure, you can break out on the dry erase board and show why this event had to happen, and that event had to happen, and how this is all gonna pay off Walking Dead #50, but just about every choice made in this storyline seemed either obvious and/or inept (all those pages establishing the zombie girl on the chain, and then she just entirely disappears in the fight or torture scene, for example. Huh?) In the back pages, Kirkman talks about how this book is his baby and how he wants to take his time with it, and not milk it and/or exploit it and if that's really, really true, I gotta say: dude, maybe you should cut back on your other work. Or something. Because I've gone from being able to recommend this book with complete confidence to kinda coughing and scuffing my shoes when someone brings it up. Awful, because it's been--and can be--so much better.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Hmm, I was kinda crabby, I guess. DESOLATION JONES #8, it looks like.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Starting out, I thought it'd be SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1, but I realize now how frustrated I am with WALKING DEAD #33. Go back to being good, damn you!!

TRADE PICK: I'm not very far into it, but if you want to see ambition to burn, check out ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL 2 TPB. The first couple of Len Wein written issues are okay fine Marvel '70s stuff, but then there's a three issue storyline from Steve Gerber concerning The Thing, Dr. Strange and a handful of people whose lives are changed by a cosmic harmonica that cannot be beat for audacity and crazy "what the fuck"-ness. (I'm also impressed at how Gerber mentions smells and sounds in his captions to put the reader in the scene--it really convinces you that this is New York as it was, in all its overwhelming glory). Also for those of you who love to ponder the strangeness of alternate worlds so like--and yet unlike!--our own, check out WHAT IF CLASSIC VOL 3 TPB. Not for the stories (which generally suck ass) but for the circulation statement reprinted on one of the letters pages: Marvel was printing something like 270,000 copies of a stinky little book like WHAT IF back in the late '70s. Take that, Civil War!

Uh, which is to say: And you? What rotated your tires this week?

Until the 12th of never: Graeme reviews today's books. No, really. Today's books. Who knew?

Surprisingly early reviews this week, because I'm out of town this weekend - Kate and I are off to Mendocino to escape the rat race for a couple of days - and I'd feel bad if I didn't get the chance to tell you about Kaare Andrews' Frank Miller fetish. For those of you who're interested in what Kate's watching on TV as I type this, it's a Johnny Mathis concert from PBS last night. Apparently he's a native San Franciscan, which I was kind of surprised to learn. The PBS host said that something that made most San Franciscans proud was that Mathis was born in their city, which is either overstating Johnny's importance to most people or a telling fact about how disconnected I am from the San Francisco zeitgeist. But, while Kate looks up Johnny's Wikipedia entry, I guess I should tell you about the comics that came out today... 52 WEEK THIRTY-ONE: Well, that was surprising. After the relatively relaxed and low key last few issues, we have the return of intensity and foreboding disaster: Everything goes horribly wrong in space! Captain Comet dies! Aliens get possessed by some evil monster! And back on Earth, Ralph Dibny starts acting like a detective again and makes me feel dumb for not knowing who Supernova is yet. We're still playing the delayed gratification game - actually, the space plot brings the first look of the big bad, so that's some gratification, I guess. And perhaps that's really the building suspense game, on reflection? - but we're getting somewhere again, it feels like. And there's something unexpected and strangely fulfilling about the introduction of destruction caused by an honest-to-goodness bad guy again after thirty weeks of soap opera and shades of grey. Yes, I'm shallow, but this was pretty Good, if you ask me.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #22 and MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2006: I loves me the Christmas comics. They manage to completely bypass my cynicism and bad feelings about the world of comic books, and put me in a warm and happy mood that makes me want to listen to Phil Spector telling me about how great the holidays are. The Justice League book completely fits into this; it's a pretty generic story - Flash needs to learn the true meaning of Christmas, so the Phantom Stranger appears and takes him to the Christmases Past of Batman - but there's something traditional about that familiarity, so it magically gets a Good that it probably would miss at any time that wasn't the most wonderful time of the year... The Marvel special (featuring the cover of the month from Frazer Irving - It's a Norman Rockwell tribute! With a really, really cute grumpy She-Hulk on the edge of the page!) is a bit more of a mixed bag: The three strips are enjoyable (especially Wong teaming up with Fin Fang Foom, with art by Roger Langridge), but that's only 22 pages of this 52-page book. The rest is a collection of adverts, an Official Handbook entry for Santa (a nice idea, but it wears thin after four pages), reprints of previous holiday special covers and, most oddly, "holiday ornament" cut-outs, which are recycled cover art remade as clip-art for you to trim out and trim the tree with. Because, really, what says yuletide fun more than Civil War? The strips are fun and Good, the package brought down just to an Okay by the filler at the back of the book. Ho ho oh.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1: Okay, ignoring the rest of the book for a minute, can I say how much I enjoyed the last page of this issue, and the four panel look at the storylines from the next year of the book? Don't even concentrate on the hints themselves (although the return of Golden Age Superman again and the apparent murder of Batman are attention getters aimed directly at the continuity porn fans that this book is made for), it's the format that I found refreshing and one I want to see copied elsewhere - Boasting that there really is some longterm planning, and also that the rest of the series will offer something different from the soap operatics that fill this premiere issue. Sure, the pacing is nice - the new team gets gathered in the first issue, including introducing all of the brand new characters - but nothing really grabbed me about the plot itself. Someone is killing off DC's "legacy" characters? Wasn't the plot of the first arc of the last JSA series? I wonder if that's repetition or intentional callback? It's also something less... I don't know... optimistic, maybe, than what I'd hoped for? Don't get me wrong, it's all very competent and perfectly Okay, but I'm still disappointed, for some reason.

MANHUNTER #26: It's back! DC's version of Spider-Girl, the book that won't die, returns with this new issue that's meant to be new reader friendly and... isn't. As a non-Manhunter reader, I'm lost with the subplots even as much as I appreciate the (somewhat obvious) introduction of the main character through Wonder Woman's guest shot. But that's kind of problematic as well, because her guest shot is so firmly rooted in pre-Infinite Crisis continuity (Wonder Woman's still dealing with the fallout of murdering Maxwell Lord? But that happened, what, two years ago?) that her own book is doing its best to ignore. It's fine, but nothing special. Eh, but I hope it works out for them nonetheless. I like the underdog thing, what can I say?

NEWUNIVERSAL #1: Yes, I know it's meant to be all lower case, for some reason, but I'm ignoring that wankiness. There's something false about the set-up in this issue - Characters speak in unnatural dialogue that sounds like bad movies, while captions introduce characters and places clinically and make a point of being inorganic. The plots that cycle into action midway through the book are nothing original, either: Murder and falsely accused murder and mysterious symbolism, all of which have come part of the popcultural landscape thanks to shows like X-Files, Lost and... well, Heroes. There's something about this book that feels really reminiscent of Heroes - the mysterious appearance of powers in a group of indivduals who don't understand them, but are linked in ways they don't understand, the mythology and explanations that will come out in time. Given the choice between the two, I'd go for Heroes right now - It seems more outwardly aware of the history and cliches that it's playing around with, which is the kind of thing I dig - but, I admit it, I'm in for this for the next few issues, just to see where it goes next. Nothing really new, but that doesn't stop it being a cautious Good right now.

PURITY #1: Hibbs hands this to me, and tells me to look at it, because the art's worth seeing. And he's right, for the last few pages - Something happens there to tighten up the way everything looks and suddenly it goes from looking like Ron Lim to being Geof Darrow-esque, and I stop thinking that maybe he's gone insane from having to read everything that comes out each week. But even Darrow-esque artwork doesn't save writing that seems to steal the "What if angels were film noir characters" idea and change it into "What if angels were Quentin Tarantino characters only without the dialogue?" There are some terrible cliches here in place of characterization - the beating up gangbangers scene being but one of them - but this isn't one of those series that really cares about such small things as characterization when there are people to shoot through the head with special guns that kill angels. It's fine for what it is, but hardly likely to sell to anyone outside of an audience already predisposed to stories where the spiritual aspects are there only as disguise for the bloodthirst. Eh.

SPIDER-MAN: REIGN #1: I can't really remember where the "It's like Dark Knight Returns, only with Spider-Man" buzz for this book began, but having read the first issue, I'm now convinced that it came from some Marvel staffer trying to undercut the inevitable realization that this book is Dark Knight Returns, only with Spider-Man. And not in a good way. It's almost impressive how close the rip-off... um, I mean "homage" is: You've got the hero as a broken old man who'd rejected the superhero ways of his youth who does the fragmented narration that comes impressively close to noir parody (Or here, Frank Miller parody) and at the end of the first issue reclaims his costumed identity and with it his youth (The narration for these scenes really is a bizarre wannabe Miller moment: "The mask thinks it's funny. It's laughing. Laughing. I can't take it. My ears can't take it. So I stop listening. I turn off the volume."). You've got the forces of authority that have become corrupted and dystopian. You've got the dramatic scenes in the rain. And, to make the whole thing complete, you have the expositionary dialogue from insincere television talking heads pretending to be savvy media and political criticism. Quite clearly, writer-artist Kaare Andrews read Dark Knight at a young age and was permanently scarred, and all of his career has been leading up to this particular series... It's just sad that, well, it's so amazingly close to one of the most well-known superhero comic books of all time that you can't get past it and appreciate it as anything on its own. Which is a shame: Andrews' artwork is amazing (some odd computer generated inserts aside - Is that a photo of a car on the last page, stealing attention like that?), and deserves a stronger story than it's been given; it's nicely idiosyncratic (especially for a Marvel book) and kind of close to some of Kyle Baker's more cartoony work, but works with the grim tone because of the color palette he's working with.

But, yes, it's a grim tone. Which fits for the whole "I wish it was 1986" thing, but not for the whole "It's Spider-Man" thing. Am I the only one who thinks that Spider-Man may have been a melodrama, but one that had a constant undercurrent of jokes and humor and, you know, not being completely, pointlessly bleak? I might be judging this too early; for all I know, the next three issues will move more and more towards a lightening up and an idea that - hey! - Everything is not pain and misery. But... somehow I doubt it. I'm sure it'll be grim and gritty and self-important, and as spectacularly illustrated as it will doubtlessly be, I'm also sure that it'll stay as needlessly derivative and Eh as this first issue.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #2: Man, but Tim Sale can draw. Darwyn Cooke likes to play up the insecurities of the younger Man of Steel, but it's still Sale's show here - The look on Superman's face on the last page says more than any amount of word balloons could ever do. Good.

ULTIMATE VISION #1: Oh, I give up. "I'm a robot! But a sexy robot! And I want to save the universe, but... I'm overpowered by a man taking advantage of my naive nature!" Mike Carey takes an old-school plot and brings his own brand of sexual subtext to it, making it... well, more interesting but not necessarily any better. I'm not sure we're supposed to really take the innocent female falling prey to the evil male thing too seriously or read anything gender specific into the story, but that's kind of inescapable in a book where the cover features the title character fainting towards the reader, breasts first, robot breasts or not. Crap.

WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #1: You've got to love a book that has a reach that exceeds its grasp, and that's definitely this book. There are some great ideas here, but the execution is frustratingly scattered - The artwork doesn't sell the characters right now (Is it too cartoony to sell the drama? Maybe, but more importantly too many of the faces look too similar, which isn't good on a new book with so many brand new characters), and the script is too big on scenes and bringing characters on stage to have enough space for a plot to bring you along with it. But the end of the book, and the start of the real (first? Is this a mini or an ongoing?) plot caught my attention much more than anything else: A closed-room murder mystery? Now that's a story I haven't seen enough of in superhero books lately. What I'm left with, then, is a new series that wants to be different from everything else around, but tries too hard and feels unfocused, but still manages to make me want to read the next issue to see what happens when things settle down and it works out what it wants to be. Okay, and here's hoping it gets better as it goes along.

PICK OF THE WEEK is probably 52, surprisingly. There were lots of good things to read, but nothing really great - although I still haven't read this week's Dr. Strange: The Oath, but I'd be surprised if that doesn't knock the pants of everything else when I get to it - and the PICK OF THE WEAK book is Spider-Man: Reign. It might not have been the worst thing I read, but it was probably the biggest missed opportunity. The choice for TRADE OF THE WEEK is even easier than complaining about Batman rip-offs, though; ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOLUME 2 came out today, and that means that lots more non-team weirdness from the '70s is available for the masses to read, enjoy and secretly wonder what happened to Marvel's quality control back in those days, and who could want more than that?

So, before I skidaddle to a world offline, what's everyone else been reading?

Arriving 12/6

As long as I put it up before the store opens at 11, I'm not LATE! 52 WEEK #31 AGENTS OF ATLAS #5 (OF 6) ALL NEW ATOM #6 AMERICAN SPLENDOR #4 (OF 4) ANGEL AULD LANG SYNE #2 ARCHIE #571 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #175 ATHENA VOLTAIRE FLIGHT O/T FALCON APE ED #3 AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES II #3 (OF 8) BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #1 BEYOND #6 (OF 6) CROSS BRONX #4 (OF 4) DARKNESS PITT FIRST LOOK DELPHINE #1 DESOLATION JONES #8 DETECTIVE COMICS #826 DOCTOR STRANGE OATH #3 (OF 5) EMO BOY #10 EVERWINDS SHROOMS ONE SHOT EXTERMINATORS #12 FREE SEXXX #2 (A) HARD TO SWALLOW #2 (A) HERO SQUARED ONGOING #4 INCREDIBLE HULK #101 INTERIORAE #2 INVINCIBLE #37 IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #3 JEREMIAH HARM #5 JONAH HEX #14 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #28 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1 KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #121 LOONEY TUNES #145 MANHUNTER #26 MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #22 MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL MELTDOWN #1 (OF 2) METADOCS CODE BLACK ONE SHOT MIDNIGHTER #2 MYSTERY IN SPACE #4 (OF 8) NEW EXCALIBUR #14 NEW TALES OF OLD PALOMAR #1 NEWUNIVERSAL #1 NEXT #6 (OF 6) NIGHTLY NEWS #2 (OF 6) NIGHTWING #127 NINJA SCROLL #3 OFFICIAL HANDBOOK O/T INVINCIBLE UNIVERSE #1 (OF 2) OTHER SIDE #3 (OF 5) OUTSIDERS #43 PURITY #1 (OF 4) RED PROPHET TALES OF ALVIN MAKER #4 (OF 12) SPIDER-MAN AND POWER PACK #2 (OF 4) SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1 (OF 4) STAN LEE MEETS SILVER SURFER STAR WARS REBELLION #5 STRANGERS IN PARADISE #86 SUPERGIRL #12 SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #2 TONY LOCO #1 TRANQUILITY #1 ULTIMATE VISION #1 (OF 5) UNCANNY X-MEN #481 WALKING DEAD #33 WHITE TIGER #2 (OF 6) WITCHBLADE #102

Books / Mags / Stuff ALL STAR COMPANION VOL 2 TP BAYBA DOMINA IN RED GN (A) COMICS INTERNATIONAL SEPT 2006 #200 CONAN BOOK OF THOTH TPB COWBOYS & ALIENS TP CRACKED MAGAZINE JAN FEB 2007 #3 ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL 2 TP HEAVY METAL JANUARY 2007 HWY 115 HC LETHE GN MODERN MASTERS VOL 9 MIKE WIERINGO SC NEW X-MEN CHILDHOODS END VOL 3 TP OLD BOY VOL 3 TP RED SONJA VOL 1 HC SGN ROBOTIKA HC RUNAWAYS VOL 2 HC SACHS AND VIOLENS TP SHOWCASE PRESENTS SHAZAM VOL 1 TP SIZZLE #32 (A) STAR BRAND CLASSIC VOL 1 TP STEAM PARK GN TIKI ART NOW VOL 3 TP TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #149 TOYFARE HASBRO MARVEL LEGENDSSERIES 2 CVR #114 TREASURY VICTORIAN MURDER VOL8 MADELEINE SMITH SC TROUBLE WITH GIRLS TP WHAT IF CLASSIC VOL 3 TP WILL EISNERS SPIRIT ARCHIVES VOL 20 HC WITCHBLADE COMPENDIUM ED TP WIZARD MAGAZINE 2007 MOVIE SPECTACULAR (183B) WRAITHBORNE TP

What looks good to you?

-B

The Ghost of a Post: Jeff's Reviews of 11/29 Books.

Well, that'll learn me about posting from work. I started a post here, opened another browser window, and the browser bombed right out. This is how companies plan to win the productivity wars, I guess: by keeping their computers so underpowered they can't even access the Internet without exploding. Grumble, grumble.... Anyway, before someone sends me an email and crashes my entire desktop:

52 WEEK #30: Bringing back the Ten-Eyed Man was a fine bit of cheek, but the issue was un-fun and perfunctory in the extreme. First, the writers win me over to their slapdash and wack-a-doodle ways, and then they break out Batman soul-searching and plot-convenient cancer coughing? Eh, except for the cover which was weird and lovely.

BATMAN #659: Morrison-less, but better this than the book being delayed six weeks, right? Something about this issue reminded me of the Moench/Colan issues of Detective Comics (that was, what, late 400s?), where Batman got a new villain and a new love interest every three issues (and half the time they turned out to be one and the same). OK, because Mandrake and Ostrander are professionals, G-Mo's first Batman arc was a mixed bag, and I'm obviously a nostalgic slob.

BATMAN THE SPIRIT: As Graeme said, a goofy bit of fun with damn lovely illustrations and an opening sequence (Spirit and the collapsing logo) that sold me on the book. As it went on, however, I thought it suffered a bit from Loeb-itis (lazily glib comparisons and contrasts between the two heroes and their viewpoints, a rogue's gallery assembled for the flimsiest of reasons, super cheaty last minute switcheroos) and had just about worn out its welcome by the time it crossed the finish line. But I admit it was worlds better than I thought it'd be, and the stuff that did work worked very, very well, so I'll say Good--and if you've never read a single issue of Superman/Batman, you'd probably go even higher.

BLACK PANTHER #22: Either Civil War is bringing out the best in Hudlin, or he's getting better and better every issue. I thought this had a pretty good take on the Civil War and the characters and I'm more or less down with heavy-handed media commentary (that page where two different newsteams present the same crowd in completely different lights). Still, I'm mother-fuckin' tired of the mother-fuckin' Civil War--seeing Iron Man now gives me the exact same shudder and eye-roll I experienced whenever I saw an OMAC at about month two of IC. Enough already. OK.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #24: The art on this was really, really weird--like Mike Perkins was getting his eyes dilated every day before sitting down to work. I kinda thought he was rushing because he had some awesome double-page spread to focus on but when I got to that, it seemed borked too. It was great to see Arnim Zola, though, which is exactly the kind of Cap-fanboy comment that skews this to Good.

GREEN LANTERN #15: Normally, I like Ivan Reis's neo-Adams approach, but it was so dull here I expected every page turn to end in fruit pies being thrown. Actually, the issue was pretty damn dull overall: I had more fun entertaining the notion that, a la Reverse Flash, Star Sapphire is going to possess the annoyingly nicknamed Cowgirl and she'll become a new villainess called...Reverse Cowgirl! Really, that's how bored I was. Eh.

GUY GARDNER COLLATERAL DAMAGE #1: If you ask me, the only thing that stops Jog from being an unstoppably dead-on comics reviewing force of nature is that he's too nice. I picked this book up based on his review, and realize I am absolutely incapable of giving Chaykin the same benefit of the doubt as ol' Jog--seems to me H.C. is kinda trying, like late period Kirby, to create a standardized, simplified layout strong enough in its innate dynamism to allow the artist to skimp on detail and keep the pages coming quickly. Unfortunately, Chaykin has always downplayed the thinness of his line by the accumulation of detail and, without it, his work looks shaky. Like, mighty shaky. Like, I-felt-like-I-was-reading-this-book-in-the-backseat-of-a-moving-car shaky. Mix in a high price and a cavalier disregard for previous continuity (which, on the one hand, who cares, and, on the other, why not make this Gus Gooferson Collateral Damage then?) and you've got sub-Eh, as far as I'm concerned. Chaykin in his prime was a revelation and the man's got a right to make a living, but I can't endorse helping him pay the rent with this one.

IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1: If you want an unbiased review of this, read everyone else: they're the guys who are all "hmm, Iron Fist, yes, a third-rate Marvel character and I suppose for what's done here, it's done very well as it a c-lister potentially interesting..." But, see, I'm an Iron Fist fan and this is dangerously close to the Iron Fist book I've missed for close to thirty years, packed with lots of shout-outs to the stuff that made this great way back when. Rooftop fight in the midnight rain with ninjas, right out of Marvel Spotlight, only with Hydra and robomantises and better drawn? Check. Mysterious appearance of the Steel Serpent, complete with scar and black jumpsuit? Check. Potentially mystical forces operating behind the scenes, possibly by Iron Fist's own uncle? Checkity McCheck. Even if I wasn't an Iron Fist diehard, I'd recommend this because David Aja's work is dreamy and terrific. But since I am, and since this makes up for every asstacular previous attempt by people who clearly didn't give a crap about the character, this gets a relieved Very Good from me. May it sell jillions and bajillions of copies.

NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE #10: Pretty great, particularly when Immonen goes berserk and starts drawing the Nextwavers' Forbush-Man inflicted alternate lives in the style of alternate comics (Machine Man by Clowes was easy to spot and hilarious, but but those Captain Marvel pages as if done by, I dunno, Farel Dalrymple, were funny and actually kind of affecting). The upside down church and the melancholic alternate lives all lead me to suspect this is Ellis giving Morrison a good-natured, bruise inducing nipple tweak, but that's the beside the point: This title has climbed back up to the Very Good pile and I hope it stays there 'til the end.

POWERS #21: Bendis shows Bendis how Bendis probably should have handled Secret Wars and/or Avengers: Dissembled. Hopefully, Bendis is taking notes. Very Good.

STAN LEE MEETS DR DOOM: Stan really doesn't have much to say in this one, and that, combined with the lovely "nothing-much-happens" art makes me think it was written in classic Marvel style, where the art's done first and Stan sits down with a shaker of vodka tonics to write the dialogue next. Also, weirdly, of the three Jeph Loeb books on the market this week, this is the only one where nobody says "Oy." Doesn't that just seem wrong, somehow? Oy--I mean, Eh.

SUPERMAN BATMAN #30: A shame to see such pretty work wasted on such a "who cares?" kinda script. If you told me this was a retooled JLA Classified story, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Eh-tastic.

WHAT IF WOLVERINE ENEMY OF THE STATE: Doesn't that title give you a headache? It needs a verb and an article in the worst way. As for the story itself, I liked how strangely Aeon-Fluxish the art looked, and the story had tons of cheap dramatic visuals (Captain America, Amputee, for example) and really dumb ideas (Wolverine, like some homicidal Bugs Bunny, apparently tunneled all the way to the secret island hideaway). In a way, very true to the originals What If books (most of which were also cynically morbid and hilariously stupid) but frankly most of them were sub-Eh, too.

PICK OF THE WEEK: IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1, yessir.

PICK OF THE WEAK: GUY GARDNER COLLATERAL DAMAGE #1, I guess. I certainly spent enough time bitching about it, anyway.

TRADE PICK: A lot of good stuff this week: Vol. 6 of BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD continues to delight me, even though I gladly concede it seems a little lost once it took its main character to a new level, and ESSENTIAL MAN-THING TPB, which I haven't even begun to crack. But, as I recall, I also thought that PUNISHER MAX VOL 6 BARRACUDA TPB was one helluva story when it came out, too.

NEXT: God help us all, probably one more column as I mouth off about a few books I read during that month off, and review some of the manga I've been reading lately.

And youse?

Thank God November's Done, Part II: The Post Jeff's Been Waiting A Month to Make....

Whew. So, the twin vices of Nanowrimo (slow to get going, but a blast by the end) and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (a bazillion times more shallow than Freedom Force but if you're a button-mashing console-owning Marvel fanboy--and boy, am I!---it's insanely compelling) kept me from posting nearly all month, which is a drag because I was sure I'd blown my chance to write about my trip to Vegas, but Graeme's Friday post at Newsarama about favorite comic book stores gives me another shot. Now, of course, Comix Experience owns my heart (well, technically, my soul--damn that Hibbs!) but I just gotta give the mad love for Ralph Mathieu's Alternate Reality Comics in Vegas:

Ralph's shop is well-lit and just jammed with awesomeness. The three following pics form a very sloppy panorama shot, but it gives you a bit of an idea of what'd you see if you walked in the door and turned your head from left to right:

I think even at this thumbnail size, you can see the crazy amount of variety--like that last picture with Ralph. See how Uncle Scrooge is right next to first volume of The Ultimates (or, to use the shorter nickname by which it'll likely be known in the industry, "the good one") next to Kinetic right above Desolation Jones? Or, if you look over his left shoulder, there's The Waiting Place next to Tomine's Sleepwalk, adjacent to Promethea and crowned with that Challengers of the Unknown archive? That's a whole bunch of mighty good--and mightily diverse--comics right there.

When my wife and I showed up there, Ralph was incredibly kind even before I introduced myself. Once I did, however, Ralph and I did an incredibly truncated version of the Retailer Talk--truncated because I'm really a counter monkey, not a retailer. (The Retailer Talk, by the way, is kinda like how dogs have to sniff each other's butts when they first meet. Nobody's really going to relax and feel comfortable until each has asked the other: (a) how much square footage is your store? (b) how do you rack your books? (c) how's this year/quarter/mutually agreed upon fiscal period been for you? (d) [other stuff I don't know because I'm not a retailer and I usually don't pay attention this long] and, more often than not, (e) how is ____________________ selling for you? [__________ this year being, like, 52 or Civil War tie-ins.] And at that point, question (e) is usually what leads into the first rate story-swapping, rumor-trading and/or dirt-dealing that makes the conversation interesting for non-retailers like myself.) Ralph's also got a great conversational gambit in the form of all the amazing original art he's collected over the years which he has up in one section--Edi pretty much just stared at in awe while Ralph and I continued to bullshit.

I didn't take a picture of the section, by the way, but Ralph's manga-fu is awesome: I picked up a whole bunch of stuff Hibbs usually doesn't stock because the early volumes didn't sell--Love Roma and Azumanga Daioh, for example, and the first three volumes of the Great Catsby (which was my birthday splurge because that shit ain't cheap)--and was just generally agog at how well Ralph had, like, arranged a separate yaoi section in the bulk of the manga section.

So, yeah, to sum up: Alternate Reality Comics is an awesome store, well-lit, friendly and jammed with great books. Next time you hit Vegas, you should check it out if you consider yourself a comic store aficionado. It's a great shop.

Whew. You can't believe how long I waited to tell you that.

Next: Reviews of books! Provided I can think of something to say that's not parroting Mr. McM's reviews, that is.

Thank God November is done: Graeme's reviews of the 11/29 books.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around these here parts, as we start to think about where to put the tree and all other holiday decorations. It's also beginning to look a lot like lots of first issues this week, for some reason. Whatever happened to the holiday slowdown...? Other than it meaning that Civil War gets pushed back, of course. 52 WEEK THIRTY: Admit it - When you've sat around at home, wondering just how Batman stopped being a dick and got his batgroove back, you never imagined that it would include a group of demon killers with eyes on their fingers. This is an Okay issue; there were some good parts (I especially liked Robin's conviction that Bruce Wayne had snapped and that his reason for taking he and Nightwing around the world was to train Nightwing to become the new Batman, and Batman's "My soul is black" confession was curiously satisfying, in a weird way), but it wasn't a story that really belonged in this title. I can see that it seemed like a good idea back when the book was first being planned out, but by this point, it felt less "And this is what's going on with the more famous characters" than an interruption to the regular storylines that wasn't entirely welcome. The only regular characters to appear were Montoya and the Question, and that plot has become less satisfying to me with the sudden introduction of the Question's disease a few weeks back - a cough that has now caused him to become bedridden and days from death, despite his never showing any symptoms up until that point. I read this immediately after last week's issue, and the difference between the two was very apparent - This was more deliberate and less interesting that seeing a homicidal egg kill people for laughing. The way forward for this book should be clear: Less icons, more freewheeling insanity.

BATMAN/THE SPIRIT #1: It's Jeph Loeb week, apparently, what with this book (co-written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke), Onslaught Reborn and his story in the Stan Lee book all coming out at the same time. For all I know, he wrote the Heroes episode that was on on Monday as well (Kate and I ended up watching the six-hour marathon of the first few episodes on Sci-Fi the other night and ending up hooked. Damn all of you who recommended the show to me). This is probably the best of his output, and a lot of that is down to Cooke's involvement - even with the weakest script in existence, this would still be a beautiful book (That splash page with the Spirit in front of the falling signage that spelled his name... Ahhhh....). Luckily, the story lived up to the artwork, being wonderfully retro and goofy, refusing to take itself too seriously and zooming through a silly and enjoyable plot involving duel femme fatales and a policeman convention taking place next to a supervillain vacation spot in Hawaii. Part of the charm for me was that it was so goofy - There are probably some who feel that the first meeting of two comic icons like this should have been something much more self-important and full of meta-commentary about Will Eisner's contributions to the medium or something, but the focus on fun and the speed and momentum of the storytelling felt a much more appropriate tribute. Very Good, and enough to make me very excited to see what Cooke comes up with on the new Spirit book that's launching later this month.

CROSSING MIDNIGHT #1: Maybe it's the title, which makes me think of some American indie movie about a white man discovering the native American experience or something - No, I don't know why, either - but I wasn't convinced by Mike Carey's new Vertigo book, based on this first issue. It just didn't come together for me, with the story feeling too overloded with expositionary narration and underloaded with, you know, things happening. Jim Fern's artwork was surpisingly nice, though. Eh.

THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1: Or, as I just mistyped, The Immoral Iron Fist, which would be an entirely different book altogether ("Hail Hydra, you said? How much would Hydra pay to be hailed, exactly?"). But this particular book: WHEN TITANS CLASH! Ed Brubaker's gritty realism meets Matt Fraction's more-humorous experimentalism and the results will blow your mind. Or, at least, provide a Very Good first issue. You can see touches of both writers here - Brubaker's very apparent in the structure, but you can see Fraction's lightness of touch in the dialogue, and the two work off each other remarkably well. David Aja's art has some really nice moments (his Luke Cage in one panel is weirdly hilarious), and gives the book a style unlike anything else in Marvel at the moment except for, maybe, Michael Lark's work over on Daredevil. Maybe we're seeing the start of an official Brubaker aesthetic...?

ONSLAUGHT REBORN #1: There's a page in here, with a close-up of Franklin Richards as he's holding some kind of magic ball that's never explained, where you can see Rob Liefeld really trying as an artist. I'm not being sarcastic at all; the close-up is not a traditional Liefeldian face at all - there's clearly been an attempt at observation into what people actually look like. Sadly, the same can't be said of the rest of the book, which is full of exactly what you'd expect from a book that's aimed directly at readers who thought that it was time to revisit Marvel's creative lowest point. The story, too, is subpar, hitting all the points that people normally use to attack comics from the mid-90s: Nothing gets explained, and it's presumed that you already know the backstory of Onslaught, Franklin Richards and the entire Heroes Reborn world... which, admittedly, may explain why the Fantastic Four is attacked by the world's dumbest supervillain (Here's a clue, Onslaught: If you can possess people, and one of the people who you've possessed is being suffocated by someone they're fighting, then possess that other person to stop them doing it. Supervillain telepathy 101, people. Come on). It's an Awful mess, albeit a brightly-colored one that's probably exactly what the target audience wanted.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1: I don't like the Punisher, I admit it. I think he's a one-note character, and don't really get his popularity outside of suspecting that a lot of people are projecting their desire to shoot a lot of other people onto him (Ian Brill, I'm talking to you, here). That said, there were two moments here that I found myself wanting to buy the next issue of this series, and both are down to Matt Fraction's sense of humor. The first is the fairly minor use of the phrase "Government space gun," which amuses me greatly for no immediately apparent reason, but the second was the monologue that finishes "And Russell Johnson played the Professor on Gilligan's Island. Nobody gets me. Maybe it's the big skull on my chest. I don't know." That's all the indication I need that, just maybe, this book will have the right lack of reverence for the character after all. Good, and I really didn't see that coming at all.

STAN LEE MEETS DOCTOR DOOM #1: Have you seen the cover to this? It's as if Salvador Larocca thought "Doctor Doom? He's just like Darth Vader. I'll do a Star Wars thing." Seriously, what's with the space ships? Inside, it's more of the same from the earlier Stan specials, more self-loathing, but with even less story... maybe the law of diminishing returns is starting to kick in, or perhaps it was asking a bit much for one joke to stretch across five different comics when it's as weak a joke as this. For this one, the punchline is that Doom blames Stan for his bad reputation, until Stan proves that he's a nobody nowadays by showing that he was Willie Lumpkin in the Fantastic Four movie. Uh... ha ha? Perhaps? The fact that the final book in the series has Stan meeting the Silver Surfer scares me, because I'm worred that it's going to be the one where Stan gets serious and tries to be deep, and really, who wants to see that? (Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness do a back-up which is fine but pointless - although it does make me want to see McGuinness on the FF book from now on - but the star of the show is probably Tom Beland's two page tribute to Stan, which manages to laud his achievements even as it makes fun of his showbox personalty). Okay.

ULTIMATE POWER #2: It's Generic Marvel Plot #1: Heroes met, have a misunderstanding and fight. The problem is in the execution, which shows up just how mismatched Brian Michael Bendis and Greg Land are; Bendis's thing is all about the dialogue, and even more than that, about the asides within the dialogue... It requires someone who can handle subtlety and body language well, and Greg Land, um, isn't that guy. Much has been made about Land's use of the photo reference, but his bigger fault to me is that he really can't do anything other than melodramatic overacting - His characters never speak, they shout (especially his women, who more often than not, have their mouths wide open in full-on screaming mode), and that plays especially oddly when given Bendis dialogue. Characters don't quip anymore, they kind of yell lines while women stand in the background with mouths agape and chests pushed out. It makes for bizarrely uncomfortable reading, as if The West Wing was performed by pornstars or something. Awful.

WONDER WOMAN #3: Can you imagine if this book had come out on time? I'd be able to tell you that it's a well-done, Good story that actually turns out to take the "Who is Wonder Woman?" title in two different directions at once, with three characters making claim to the identity (Four if you include Hercules, who assumes the role without taking the name), while also examining what it means to be Wonder Woman ("I never called myself 'Wonder Woman'. The press did. She's an idea. A symbol. She's not me." "Ah, but symbols have power, Diana... and you have wasted yours."), all against the backdrop of crazy superbattles with characters who are clearly introduced for new readers, and you wouldn't be able to counter with, "Well, that's be great if it didn't take them three months between issues." If you can ignore the delays, though, this is pretty much old school superheroics done right.

PICK OF THE WEEK, I think, would be Batman/Spirit, although Iron Fist comes a close second. PICK OF THE WEAK is Ultimate Power, which cements my wrongness for many people, because it means that I really genuinely think that something is better than a Jeph Loeb/Rob Liefeld book. I'm sorry, everyone who's offended. TRADE OF THE WEEK is an old one, for me; Hibbs pushed the first ASTRO CITY trade, LIFE IN THE BIG CITY, into my hands this week after my review of the most recent issue last week, and God damn if it wasn't everything he'd promised. I also picked up the first volume of SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE due to recommendations from Newsarama readers, and greatly enjoyed the soap operatics therein, as well.

What about the rest of you?

Because Hibbs brought it up last post...

...Marvel officially delays Civil War #6 and 7 two weeks. It's because penciller Steve McNiven has strep, apparently, although I'm wondering what the schedule for #7 will end up being if he still hasn't finished #6 yet.

Hibbs on 11/22

I'm so totally, crazily, not in the mood to write, but since G didn't get his comics last week, and Jeff is still NaNo-ing, I guess I should say something, even if it is short and crappy. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #536: I liked the first half (or so) of this filling in the blanks of CIVIL WAR #5 (BTW, #6 isn't listed on the 12/20 Marvel FOC list, which means it isn't going to hit that revised ship date, I don't think. What that means for #7 is even a bigger question) -- yes, there's your failsafe sequence, yes that makes point A match a bit better to point B, but then, suddenly, there's a time jump forward and we're told to read CIVIL WAR #6 (twice!) to have it make sense. Uh.... what? So, oddly half GOOD and half AWFUL.

BOYS #5: I almost cried when Hughie met Nice Girl (or whatever her name is.... does she have a name? I know I've forgotten) on the park bench. It just feels so contrived, and I can see where that's going. This book is really By-The-Numbers, and yet, and yet... I like D's art and I like G's writing, and I approve of the premise in general ways, and I like the characters more or less. So why am I so under-whelmed by the final package? OK

CONNOR HAWKE DRAGON BLOOD #1: I don't really have anything meaningful to say about this -- I just need to fill out the column inches til I get to the next book I *want* to say anything about (PWJ, so, yes filler indeed). Utterly competently done (though how ON EARTH someone having an Archery contest can never have heard of Ollie Queen is... weird), but Connor is mostly defined by what he isn't, rather than anything he is. That's why he needs Eddie as a sidekick, to provide really any color whatsoever. There's absolutely, positively, nothing wrong with this comic... but there's nothing too thrilling about it either. Competently OK

DRAIN #1: Sexy ninja Vampire fighting Evil. Yeah, sounds like an old-school IMage book. Again, competent, but dull. EH.

FANTASTIC FOUR THE END #6: Like I said to Jeff on Friday, it's really really pretty, but it is a "What if....?", AND it is set in the future, so that's pretty much 2 strikes against any relevancy whatsoever. Which is too bad, because it IS really REALLY pretty. For the art alone: GOOD. For how much I care? OK.

PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND #2: I barely remember the first issue, but we finally meet the Pirates, and I don't like any of them whatsoever. Oh well, EH.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1: I think I'm on record that Punisher-as-cartoon works really well for me, but I'm a little less sure that Punisher-as-snarky-blogger (c'mon -- "Asshat"?!?!) is a workable tone for the long run. I definitely laughed, HARD, in a couple of places, but I kind of can't imagine that anyone who LIKES "Punisher in the Marvel Universe" is going to enjoy the tone of this. I really want to hear what someone like ex-CEer Gary Barger has to say about this, because he's the target audience, not me. No, not me.

I also think it is of extremely questionable judgment of Marvel to have an "mainstream" and "adults only" version of a character running around at the same time. Some guy in Arkansas or Iowa or something is going to end up taking a raft of shit from some parent pretty soon, I fear.

All of that aside, I really really liked this. Like VERY GOOD liked it.

SUPERGIRL & LEGION #24: Just wanted to say, y'know who I miss? The Comics Shrew. Her last review is #12 of this series, so I guess its been a year. *sad*. I like a lot of the ideas in this series, but I've been bored with the execution. Its all moving so slowwwwwwly. And when you have a Legion of a cast, things need to happen faster, IMO. EH.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #102: I'll be damned if that isn't a better origin for Spider-Woman than the "real" one. I'll never live down this sentence, but: I'm actually enjoying this Spider-Man Clone War storyline. GOOD.

WALKING DEAD #32: Wait, where did Glen come from? How is everyone so casually skulking around in an armed camp? After all of the "Sh! Quiet!" stuff, they just smile and give Michonne a pat on the back as she decides to rip out the cancerous heart? This storyline is going on way way too long, and isn't making a ton of sense. A very rare EH for an otherwise great series.

WOLVERINE #48 and WONDER WOMAN #3: just Retail Intelligence, rather than reviews. Both took MASS dives from the last issue. WOLVIE shifts from "Civil War crossover" to "Casualties of War", and, book, 1/3 of the readership walks away like that. Despite it being epilogue to the last six issues which they bought. I no understand. WW lost a quarter of the people who bought #2, so thank you massive delays (and a pretty loony story, too, I think)

X-FACTOR #13: A "sequel" to a decade old X-FACTOR story (when some kid named "Quesada" was drawing it) with X-Factor on the Couch, and it's really terrific. So much so that Jeff Lester almost bought it, after reading it, despite not having #1-12, and not being likely to buy #14. Yes, its VERY GOOD.

ZOMBIES ECLIPSE OF THE UNDEAD #1: Actually didn't read this, but another "Retail INtelligence" thing -- zombies are done. Over. Jumped the Shark, as the kids say. If you're a creator, and you're thinking about it, please do NOT do another zombie book. They're completely flat with the audience today. Seriously.

PICK OF THE WEEK: There's some competition between it and X-FACTOR #13, but I'm going to go with PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1, just because its tone COMPLETELY surprised me. And surprise is good.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Is probably really something I didn't review, but of what I did? The second half of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #536, I think.

TP / GN OF THE WEEK: MOOMIN, LUCKY, 3 new SC versions of classic Eisner works, BUDDHA 4 in SC, a new volume of Y THE LAST MAN, and a I-can-kill-you-with-it version of Morrison's X-MEN run -- it was a good week for books, I think. I'm going to geek on my young adulthood, however, and go with SWAMP THING v9: INFERNAL TRIANGLES, however. LOVE that Superman story in there, and Veitch is an under-appreciated creator. It even has an INVASION! crossover that works. Ah, for the days when Vertigo wasn't Vertigo...

That's what I got for you. What did YOU think?

-B

Arriving 11/29

I tried to post this last night, but Blogger seemed down for the two hours I kept trying it... Yep, it's a five-Wednesday month, all right. Here, have some dribs!

What I'M glad about is that there aren't any major gift-giving holidays coming any time soon...

Hopefully some reviews tomorrow, I hope.

2000 AD #1512 2000 AD #1513 (Nope, we didn't get this issue) 52 WEEK #30 AMERICAN VIRGIN #9 AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #46 ARMY OF DARKNESS #12 AVENGERS NEXT #2 (OF 5) BATMAN #659 BATMAN THE SPIRIT BLACK PANTHER #22 CW BLACK PANTHER 2ND PTG VAR #21CW CAPTAIN AMERICA #24 CW CASTLE WAITING VOL II #3 CONAN & THE SONGS OF THE DEAD #5 (OF 5) CROSSING MIDNIGHT #1 DEATHBLOW #2 DUMMYS GUIDE TO DANGER #3 (OF4) ESTANCIA #2 (OF 17) FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #6 FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #14 GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5 HUMAN ERROR PROCESSOR #2 (OF 8) GREEN LANTERN #15 GUY GARDNER COLLATERAL DAMAGE #1 (OF 2) HEAD #16 (A) IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1 ION #8 (OF 12) LOVELESS #13 MARVEL MILESTONES ONSLAUGHT MICKEY MOUSE & BLOTMAN BLOTMAN RETURNS NEGATIVE BURN #6 NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE #10 ONSLAUGHT REBORN #1 (OF 5) POWERS #21 PUNISHER #41 PUNISHER XMAS SPECIAL RUSH CITY #3 (OF 6) SAVAGE DRAGON #130 SEA OF RED #13 SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #32 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #169 SPAWN #162 SPIDER-MAN FAMILY FEATURING SPIDER CLAN STAN LEE MEETS DR DOOM STAR WARS LEGACY #6 SUPERMAN BATMAN #30 TALENT #4 (OF 4) TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #16 TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #41 TEEN TITANS #41 TEEN TITANS GO #37 TRAILER PARK OF TERROR #5 TRANSFORMERS ESCALATION #1 TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD IMAGEED #2 ULTIMATE POWER #2 (OF 9) ULTIMATE VISION #0 VERONICA #176 WARLORD #10 WETWORKS #3 WHAT IF WOLVERINE ENEMY OF THE STATE WHISPER #1 X-MEN #193 ZOMBIE #3 (OF 4) ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS #1 (OF 2)

Books / Mags / Stuff ART OF BRIAN BOLLAND HC AVENGERS GALACTIC STORM VOL 2TP BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD VOL6 GN (OF 19) COMICS JOURNAL #279 DARK HORSE BOOK OF MONSTERS HC DEGRASSI EXTRA CREDIT VOL 1 TURNING JAPANESE GN DREAM OF THE RAREBIT FIEND THE SATURDAYS HC ELRIC OF MELNIBONE GN EMILY THE STRANGE VOL 1 TP ESSENTIAL MAN-THING VOL 1 TP EX MACHINA VOL 4 MARCH TO WAR TP GREEN LANTERN REVENGE OF THE GREEN LANTERNS HC KAERIMICHI THE ROAD HOME GN (A) LAST CHRISTMAS TP MARVEL ADVENTURES FF VOL 4 COSMIC THREATS DIGEST TP MOOMIN COMPLETE TOVE JANNSON COMIC STRIP VOL 1 HC (another 1/3 of our allocation -- thank God for Baker & Taylor) OH MY GODDESS VOL 3 RTL TP PUNISHER MAX VOL 6 BARRACUDA TP RAGMOP TP SENCILLA FINALE SC SPARROW PHIL HALE ULYSSES HC

What looks good to you?

-B

Slowly catching up on everything: Graeme's reviews of the 11/15 books.

The Thanksgiving week turns out to be a week of kicking my ass - Not that I've really had that much to do outside of work and helping Kate to pull together a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, but still: I am somehow sick again (or, rather, I've not really recovered from being sick last week), and therefore haven't had a chance to get myself to the store to pick up this week's books. I've heard Punisher War Journal was good, mind you, but for now, let's talk about what you were reading this time last week... ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE BOOK TWO #1: I've never really read that much Astro City before - Maybe one other issue? - so maybe that explains just why I was so surprised by how much I loved this. I'd previously written this off as yet another Analog Hero book; you know, the ones where the characters are stand-ins for the more famous, more copyrighted characters that the creators really wanted to write about? But this is something more interesting, metacommentary about the comics industry that still works as a story, with characters who are fully-formed enough that you don't get distracted by trying to work out who their inspiration was. Surprisingly James Jean-esque cover from Alex Ross, as well. Very Good

BIRDS OF PREY #100: Well, that's a somewhat misleading cover blurb: "Who will make the cut in the new Birds of Prey"? Well, apparently, everyone, if this seeming-Mission Impossible set-up that begins this "new direction" issue is to be believed. The new team - really just the old team with the exception of Black Canary along with some new members at this point - seems interesting enough, but part of me wishes that this had been the first One Year Later issue. The book felt like it was losing momentum and direction over the last four or so issues, and I'm wondering if it's because Gail was playing for time waiting for this 100th-issue spectacular and reboot, which may have had a better chance of reaching a new audience before post-OYL apathy set in... Nonetheless, this is Good and hopefully setting up a status quo that lasts more than six months (as opposed to the last new members; Shiva was written out of the book, but did I miss something happening to Gypsy?).

THE ESCAPISTS #5: With an issue to go, I'm not entirely sure what kind of ending this series is going to have. It might just be me... Things are happening, but there doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency to anything, and the whole story feels kind of weightless, despite the apparent death of one of the characters at the end of this issue. I'm not sure why I feel so detached from the story; Is it Brian K. Vaughan's fault for not making the characters seem real enough to me, after the first issue? Is it that I can't find that much drama in copyright disputes? Or maybe it's me, considering that Hibbs loves it? Eh, with qualifiers that I may just have lost my taste and/or mind.

IRON MAN #13 and NEW AVENGERS #25: Two Iron Man spotlights in the whole Civil War way of things hit on the same week - Way to schedule these things, Marvel - and hammer home the fact that Tony Stark is going to be the next Director of SHIELD, post Civil War (Both books approach it differently; the Secretary of Defense tries to talk Tony into it in his book, while Maria Hill suggests it in Avengers by saying that it would piss off the administration. By this point, I'm not sure if I really care about consistency in anything other than core plot points anymore with this event, mind you). Despite that, though, neither of the two books really did anything else to move the story forwards; Iron Man in particular was Crap, with no core story as much as a collection of random subplots and an especially weak "Why you're great, Tony" scene. New Avengers was more enjoyable as a story, and generally Good - avoiding attempting to explain Tony Stark's motivations in favor of showing the way that Civil War is affecting the regular people of the Marvel Universe. I've really enjoyed the New Avengers crossovers; they've been giving me a lot of the background material that I would've wanted to see in the main series, but at least I've been getting it somewhere...

OMAC #5: Oh, boy, this was Awful. Bruce Jones's issues with sex are something that he should really either get out of his work entirely, or focus on and make something interesting out of it. The underage hero seduces the love interest (nine years his senior) despite her problems with the age difference, and then admits that he's broken her run of celibacy because she trusts him, and then in a "shock twist" - he gives her OMAC AIDS! Appalling.

SUPERGIRL #11: This issue is so close to what I'd like to see DC do with their schizophrenic teenage superheroine (Seriously - The version of the character here isn't anywhere close to Mark Waid's version in Legion, who wasn't anywhere close to her portrayal in the "Back In Action" Superman arc, which wasn't really close to her appearance in JLA before it got cancelled, which wasn't... well, you get the picture) and yet a million miles away at the same time - As much as the plots and artwork (Especially Joe Benitez's kind of disturbing take here) don't serve the idea well, for some reason I really like the idea of Supergirl as an awkward, swearing teenager who doesn't know who she is (just who she's supposed to be) and has random crushes on the other superheroes... I'd just like it to be done well, instead of the way it's being handled here. Imagine if that kind of Supergirl was being done with Becky Cloonan or Philip Bond artwork and didn't have stories that made it necessary for her to go undercover as some kind of someone's-idea-of-sexy pirate girl, but was just more honest and less contrived and self-conscious. Who wouldn't want to read that kind of Supergirl? Eh, and I'm getting bored of the missed opportunity that this book represents, to be honest.

PICK OF THE WEEK would be Astro City, with PICK OF THE WEAK being OMAC, which was horrible no matter which way you look at it. As you all probably expected by the pre-release excitement I'd displayed, TRADE OF THE WEEK was easily ABSOLUTE NEW FRONTIER; It's a beautiful presentation for one of the best things that DC has done with its main characters in years. The new pages are gorgeously illustrated but, for the most part, non-essential (although a couple of the scenes really help explain the breakdown one character suffers about midway through the book), but the value of the previously-unseen pages is, for me, the Darwyn Cooke-written annotations to the story, where he identifies the influences and secrets behind his work - Grant Morrison is Captain Cold? I knew there was something untrustworthy about him - in a way that makes you want to go back and reread everything one more time. If you have the money, then consider it recommended.

How did the rest of the Americans spend your Thanksgivings, and everyone else spend their weekends?

Hibbs and 11/15

52 WEEK 28: The first boring issue in several months. There's a big part of my that thinks that since they're past the halfway point, they need to dramatically ramp up the plot, right quick, to fit everything in before the end. Unless it doesn't end, in which case a lot of people are going to be really upset. I'll tell you something else: planning more weekly comics? From either big publisher? Probably not a good idea. "52" is a sales success because of a number of specific-to-the-project things, and I think it's going to be VERY difficult to replicate them for try #2. If not flatly impossible.

Last thought: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER aside, a "prophecy" that doesn't come true kind of isn't a prophecy, is it? Anyway, this issue: Extremely EH.

ASTONISHING X-MEN #18: Liked liked liked this, but the last few pages of pacing felt like "we need twice as many pages" marring an otherwise very good conclusion down to a plain GOOD.

ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK 2 #1: Is that the first time we've actually seen the "Appolo 11" on screen? Totally not what I was expecting. Liked that. Liked the whole issue, really, though the long gap between arcs is a big drag and leaves me without any forward momentum. GOOD.

BIRDS OF PREY #100: I was really afraid that wasn't going to work, but it did just fine. I still kinda think that Black Canary *has* to be on the BoP team (see: the "Birds" part), but, yeah, I'll watch where it goes. a low GOOD.

CATWOMAN #61: This "Film Freak" story has gone on for like 3 months too long. He's not not NOT a compelling antagonist. AWFUL.

CIVIL WAR #5: My first thought upon putting this down was "Huh, nothing happened" -- which is odd, because there's a NUMBER of plot points in this issue... but you can really boil the whole thing down to looking at the cover. The cover shouldn't tell the entire story, no.

Graeme's review covers most of the dumb stuff about this one, but I'm personally probably most annoyed by the bait and switch of "oooh, we're using the most dangerous villians", and then it turns out to be Jack o'Lantern and the friggin' Jester. Oooh, spooky. The problem is, even beaten, bloody, semi-conscious, drugged, and wearing a suit that is 50 pounds of useless weight, Peter shold be able to handle THOSE two light-weights without the slightest of problems. To have the big "cool!" moment being, "THe Punisher returns" isn't especially cool when it's 2 third-tier losers who probably couldn't beat Katie Power from Power Pack, y'know?

In the "Retail intelligence" category, we've had a 20% drop in sales (not orders, SALES) between issue #4 and #5. That's 20% of a REALLY BIG number, so, y'know, owie. The various tie-in comics are off by about that same amount, too. The wait for #4 didn't seem to bother anyone too badly (only 3% there, which COULD be within normal mini-series ranges), but a lot of people seemed to have jumped off this one. Jeff Lester threw his pre-ordered copy back, too -- just like he said he would.

My bottom line: too much dense (as in "dumb") story logic, and way too much Plothammering = AWFUL.

DAREDEVIL FATHER #6: It had a OCT05 code, so I cut my rack order to 2 whole copies and said "fuck it, if MARVEL doesn't care, why should I?" I mean, the LEAST they could have done is resolicited the fucker, rather than leaving a hanging chad of an old ship date like that. I'm say bullshit! Didn't read it, didn't care, very INCOMPLETE.

DEADMAN #4: This is incomprehensible gobbeldy-gook, but you put the lead in the Bostom Brand costume, and at least a few more people are going to pick it off the rack out of curiousity. Don't think they'll be back for #5, however, as it was AWFUL. Even the art by John Watkiss (who I generally like [and I know I am in the minority]) seemed majorly phoned in.

ESCAPISTS #5: NOthing cogent to say except: VERY GOOD.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #6: If you would have told me six months ago that a Dave-freakin'-Gibbons drawn Green Lantern comic wouldn't even sell double digits off my rack, I would have laughed in your face, and called you an idiot. And yet, here's our evidence for the prosecution: we sold 16 copies of #5, and 9 copies of #6. We sold more copies of frickin' OMAC, if you can beleive that.

There's no one (NO ONE!) who thought getting rid of the GLC was a worse mistake than I, but the WAY they brought them back, all instantaneously and in-the-middle-of-Soap-Opera was clearly also a mistake. And teh way they've tried to leverage a successful Rebirth into a full-scale franchise (FOUR titles, are you nuts?!?) was ALSO a mistake. And it has yielded some really awful sales for us (ION is also a train-wreck, sales wise)

DC really screwed the OYL pooch, launching way WAY too many titles off of it, and that's yielded single-digit sales on a Dave Gibbons comic. Lame.

I thought this was highly OK.

HELLBLAZER #226: I don't like John as a "real" Magus, with lots of real magic running around. I've generally dilkied this "Empathy" storyline, especially since it doesn't seem like it is ever going to end. And, while in prose you can end a chapter with "What the hell is THAT?!", it doesn't work in COMICS because there's at least a one month gap between installments. Feh. AWFUL.

IRON MAN #13: Instead of a "What the hell is up with Tony" as you'd hope you'd get from the finally-we're-synching-up-with-CIVIL-WAR issue, there's instead a lot of blah blah with Spymaster. SPYMASTER? C'mon, he's not even in the top 20 of Most Threatning IM Villians. Foo. AWFUL.

OMAC #5: Sexually-transmitted super powers? More like O-CRAP, if you ask me.

ROBIN #156: a little on the preachy side, but I liked it. OK.

SHADOWPACT #7: Well, since it made it to #7, I guess it is going to make it past the first year, which I would never have bet on, but this here's a book I really don't understand how and why it is being published. There just doesn't seem to be a POINT to this. EH.

SQUADRON SUPREME #7: This book has lost its way. Big big delays, and this is just a run-of-the-mill fight scene, really. I used to love this comic, and now I just don't care (and haven't since it switched to "all ages") EH.

ULTIAMTE FANTASTIC FOUR #36: Reach exceeding its grasp, I think. Tonally, this is way way off from the rest of the ULTIMATE books, and we're bleeding readers hard. EH.

WHITE TIGER #1: I kinda liked it, be it was way too talky and ponderous. being a co-anchor of, say, a MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS, I might be more positive, but in the relentless expansion of Marvel and DC comics, I don't see a great reason for this to exist. OK.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Probably ASTONISHING X-MEN #18.

PICK OF THE WEAK: OMAC #5, yessir. Bruce Jones is 2007's Chuck Austen or Ron Zimmerman.

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK: There's only one choice, and that's ABSOLUTE DC NEW FRONTIER. No, I mean, there's ONLY one choice -- I can't come up with a second place choice at all this week.

That's what I thought, hows about you?

-B

Tony Bennett is made of trees. Graeme gets distracted by television.

I'm swamped with a lot of stuff in the run-up to Thanksgiving - a lot of it being work-related, sadly - so only one review right now, soundtracked by the Tony Bennett special on NBC that should've really had Nellie Mackay involved, but doesn't. More later this week. CIVIL WAR #5: Oh, come on. They've stopped even trying now, haven't they? This issue literally just doesn't make any sense when you start to think about it. There are numerous plot holes that are scattered through this issue - If Iron Man built Spider-Man's armor and suspected that he was going to rebel, why didn't he have some kind of failsafe device to deactivate the armor? Why couldn't Spider-Man punch his way through a window when he managed to punch Iron Man through a wall a page earlier? Why did Iron Man threaten Spider-Man when he wasn't doing anything illegal, anyway? If Spider-Man could be tracked in the sewers, why can't he be tracked to Captain America's secret headquarters when he goes there afterwards? Talking of those secret headquarters, how did the Punisher not only find them but manage to break into them when we're supposed to believe that no-one on the side of the Pro-Registration argument can manage to do so? Why is the Punisher a better candidate to break into the Baxter Building than the Invisible Woman, considering that she used to live there until the last issue and therefore probably knows the building better than anyone else and can, you know, turn invisible? Why does no-one seem to notice that Daredevil isn't just not Daredevil but is instead Iron Fist, who they've all met before and should presumably recognize the voice of, if not the different height and shape of the body? - that no-one even vaguely attempts to address that go beyond bad writing and into the realm of some bizarro world where this managed to get past everyone in editorial without anyone noticing, and still manage to keep all of its schtick intact. And, oh boy, there's some schtick to be found.

This issue, we finally see why DaredevilFist was playing with a silver coin in the first issue - so that he could play out some awkward Iron-Man-as-Judas metaphor in the closing pages of this issue. Sure, it makes no sense coming from that particular character (or, for that matter, from any character), but that's pretty unsurprising considering the dialogue elsewhere is full of small moments that make no sense other than as attempts to be deep. Why does Spider-Man suddenly say "...Did you know my girlfriend died of a broken neck?" with no context or follow-up when he's being attacked by the lame cannon fodder Thunderbolts (When C-list characters Jack O'Lantern - whose head is now apparently a flaming pumpkin instead of just a pumpkin mask, judging from the way it explodes - and the Jester make appearances in a series like this, then there's only one reason why, and it's called "cheap deaths to try and emotionally manipulate the reader". Ask Goliath from last issue, he'll be able to tell you about it. Don't you remember Tom Brevoort and Mark Millar saying that there would be no pointless deaths in this series? Seems that their definition of "pointless" may be somewhat flexible)? And that's not even going anywhere near the trademark "edgy" Mark Millar humor(Johnny and Sue Storm have to have new identities as - wait for it, wait for it - a married couple! Oh, my sides are splitting. "I'm still annoyed Nick Fury couldn't find us any brother and sister identities. Pretending we're a married couple is the creepiest thing I've ever done," Sue complains, as an attempt at an explanation, even though it automatically raises the question of why the two of them had to have new identities where they were related in any way whatsoever. I mean, if you were really going undercover and not wanting to be recognized at all, you'd kind of not want to hang around with your sibling and increase the potential of being recognized, right? But then we couldn't have yet another Mark Millar incest moment, and would be missing out on the "funny").

As if a plot that doesn't make sense and dialogue that doesn't work as anything other than the voice of the author wasn't enough, the mechanics of the whole thing start to get wonky as well: The Spider-Man/Iron Man confrontation comes out of nowhere unless you've been reading the crossovers, and references things that the readers who have only been reading this series - or, down the road, the inevitable trade paperback - won't get (They may also wonder about the rubble that surrounds the characters, which seems unnecessarily starting things in media res - They could've easily have skipped the background details in the art and no-one would've known any different). The Negative Zone prison gets mentioned during this scene for the first time this series, which seems like a strange way to bring in what should be what is such a big concept for the story. Similarly, we get told that "the public's behind us [and] crime is at all-time low," but that's not been even vaguely hinted at at any other point in the series. Isn't that basic, writing 101, "Show, don't tell" stuff? Trying to set up a world where the registration act has been a success gets completely undermined because it's Reed Richards telling us, and he's been a schmuck up until this point, so why should we believe him, you know...?

By this point in the series, I should at least be able to tell what the context the story is happening in is, especially as we enter the third act and - presumably - get to the climactic changes. But, instead, the way that the story is being told - against logic, against consistent characterization, and without clearly demonstrating whatever the effects of characters' action so far have been - makes it impossible for anything to really mean anything anymore, even to the point of a reader having an idea what the rest of the world thinks about what's happening. It'd be nice to think that, with two issues to go before the end of the series and the unveiling of the "new status quo" of the Marvel Universe, that Mark Millar and Tom Brevoort would manage to somehow turn that around and make it all have some real kind of resonance, but on the evidence of this issue, I'm sure they'd much rather rest on their sales figures and indulge their worst instincts instead. Awful.

I'm sure that lots of people out there really didn't mind this issue, so feel free to use the Comments thread to tell me why I'm wrong. You won't change my mind, but at least then I'll get an idea as to why it's selling so much...

DId I say Tuesday?

I kinda forgot that I had to photocopy ONOMATOPOEIA today (like in, it's 11:30, and I reach into my bag to get this week's invoice to set up, and I'm thiking "why is this so thick? Ohhhhhhhh fuck.") Then, when the truck shows up, its a new driver (cue the trumpet player "wahWAH!"), whoi tells me they give him the truck without the lift gate ("..."), and, no his only obligation is to get the boxes to the curb, not to get them inside the store ("....!")

Of course, it's 1 at that point, and Rob isn't due in until 2, so I have to haul Five Store's worth of funny book boxes (approx 1600 pounds the ladeling bill says) all by my lonesome.

So, reviews tomorrow. Maybe Thanksgiving at the latest.

-B